Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 26, Tuesday 2 June 2026

Christ Pantocrator … a fragment from a 13th century mural in a museum in Iraklion in Crete … where do we see the face of Christ? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Since the 50-day season of Easter came to an end with the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026), we have returned to Ordinary Time once again. This week began with Trinity Sunday (31 May 2026) and the Feast of the Presentation (transferred this year from 31 May to 1 June yesterday), but the liturgical colours once return today to the Green of Ordinary Time today (2 June 2026). Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The denarius with the image of Caesar represented a day’s labour … Roman coins in a private collection in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 12: 13-17 (NSRVA):

13 Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. 14 And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? 15 Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’ 16 And they brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ 17 Jesus said to them, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.

Christ the Pantocrator depicted in church domes in Rethymnon, Panormos and Iraklion in Crete (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading (Mark 12: 13-17 ) challenges us to ask where we see the face of God. When Christ asks whose face is on the coin presented to him, he may also be challenging us to consider where we too see the face of God, or which gods we see and fashion te replace the one and true God.

This account is set in the Temple in Jerusalem in Holy Week, on the day after Christ has overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

The moneychangers were in the Temple because Roman coins had images, such as the image of Caesar, who called himself ‘lord’ and ‘divine’ when those titles truly belong to God alone, and ‘priest’ when that title challenges the ritual purity of the Temple. Today's analogiy might be finding Donald Trump's image on a $250 banknote, realising how he has posted memes of himself in role of Christ and made golden statues of himself, and then asking whether it was appropriate or acceptable such a $250 banknote on the collection plate in a church on Sunday morning.

Images like those were forbidden in the Temple, and so coins had to be changed outside by the moneychangers. In the Temple, Christ is challenged by both the Pharisees and the Herodians, the people who supported Herod, the Roman puppet king.

The question they put to him was one of great debates at the time: should religious and pious Jews pay taxes to Rome?

Jewish opinion was divided on this question. But the question put to Christ is also loaded with presuppositions, with built-in fallacies and false dichotomies, like the sort of question all lawyers know not to ask in court: ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’

The question allows only one of two answers, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. But it is only a question about law. It does not ask, for example, whether it is moral to pay those taxes, or, indeed, whether it is folly not to pay those taxes.

If Christ answers ‘Yes’, those who are hostile to Roman rule are going to turn against him. But if he says ‘No’, he risks arrest for inciting rebellion.

The coin they present is a denarius, a day’s pay for workers and Roman troops. It is the ‘D’ that gives us the ‘D’ in the old formulaic £SD for British coinages. The denarius was a silver coin and the most common Roman coin of the time, and it is mentioned in the Bible more often than any other coin.

Having looked at the head on the denarius, Christ then looks at the inscription.

The obverse of the denarius of Tiberius carries an image of Tiberius with a laurel crown and lettering around it that proclaims ‘Tiberius Caesar, the Divine Augustus, Son of Augustus’ (Ti Caesar Divi Avg F Avgvstvs).

The reverse side depicts a seated woman as Pax. This was Livia Drusilia, the mother of Tiberius. She died in AD 29 and was later deified by her grandson Claudius with the title Diva Augusta. On the coin, Diva Augusta holds a palm branch and an inverted spear in her hands, and the inscription on this side refers to Tiberius as Pontif[ex] Maxim[us] or the ‘High Priest’ of Rome.

Christ does not even get around to flipping over the coin to read the inscription referring to Caesar as the High Priest. But both inscriptions are affronts to people who worship the one true God. This coin should never have been in the hands of anyone who has entered the Temple.

Yet, when Christ asks his inquisitors to produce a denarius in the Temple, they do so immediately. In other words, they themselves have already carried an image of Caesar and Diva Augusta, with those blasphemous inscriptions, into the Temple.

It is the Passover, and Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims who have arrived to remember and celebrate God’s liberation of their ancestors from slavery under foreign rulers.

At Passover, parallels might have been drawn between Tiberius and Pharaoh. Tiberius was a tyrant in his own right. He was Roman Emperor from AD 14 to AD 37, and spent most of the latter years of his reign in the Villa Jovis on the island of Capri.

While he was in Capri, rumours abounded about his lifestyle. There were lurid tales and graphic depictions of sexual perversion, capricious cruelty, and most of all his paranoia. Those who challenged his power or divinity were often thrown off the cliffs at the Villa Jovis onto the rocks below and into the sea.

If Christ says paying taxes to Caesar is wrong, he risks provoking immediate arrest by the Romans. If he says paying taxes to Rome is right, those who question him are ready to accuse him of betraying their faith and beliefs as the people recall their liberation from slavery and oppression.

But Christ trips up those who question him by showing that they are bearing proclamations of Caesar’s lordship and high priesthood into the very Temple of the very God they claim to be serving with ritual purity.

The obvious questions here are not about what is lawful, or even what is moral or wise, but: who is the divine son, and who is the great high priest?

Christ has won the argument. He has unmasked his critics; there is no need for any further argument, there is no need to say anything more; there is no need to answer the question.

Yet, he answers the question anyway: ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

So what in this world is God’s?

When it comes to any worldly power that demands to be our lord – whether it is a US president, a figurehead, or a flag that ought to be a sacred symbol but has been abused for political and racist purposes by the far-right up and down this land – the exclusive claims of some nation-state nationalism or some self-obsessed head of state demanding unquestioning loyalty, these are places reserved for the Lord God alone.

And if we seek to see the face of God, we should not be looking at the faces of the despots and rulers of the world who stir up fanaticism, or at ill-gotten accumulated wealth.

We simply need to look for the face of Christ. And we meet Christ face-to-face both in word and sacrament, and when we truly love God and love one another.

Beneath the Villa Jovis in Capri, where the Emperor Tiberius threw his enemies off the cliff-top into the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 2 June 2026):

A new edition of Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), was published last week, in time for the USPG conference in the High Leigh, Hertfordshire, which opens today (2 June) and continues until Thursday (4 June). The theme this week, from 31 May to 6 June 2026 (pp 6-7) is ‘Peacebuilding in the Gulf’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection from Saint Christopher’s Cathedral in Bahrain.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 2 June 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord God, we thank you for your grace as the USPG Annual Conference takes place at High Leigh this week. May all taking part be guided by your Spirit as we reflect on the theme of the Church as an agent of peace.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Gracious God, lover of all,
in this sacrament
we are one family in Christ your Son,
one in the sharing of his body and blood
and one in the communion of his Spirit:
help us to grow in love for one another
and come to the full maturity of the Body of Christ.
We make our prayer through your Son our Saviour.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

An icon of Christ the Great High Priest, in a shop window in Thessaloniki (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

Comerford Library opens at University of Virginia and honours the memory of leading lawyer James D Comerford

The Comerford Library opened last week at the Center for Politics in the University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Patrick Comerford

The Comerford Library opened last week at the Center for Politics in the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and honours the memory of a leading lawyer James D (Jim) Comerford of Atlanta, Georgia, who died two years ago (21 April 2024) at the age of 64.

Jim Comerford was vice-chair of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Politics, actively engaging with the development of teaching resources for students at the University of Virginia and working tirelessly to strengthen its programmes and operations.

Because of his philanthropic support of the centre and its building expansion, the centre has named the Comerford Library in his honour and memory. He often described his support of the centre as ‘an act of patriotism,’ supporting it as a means of strengthening democracy and civic institutions.

Jim loved politics and the history of politics, and his recollection of campaign and political history was second to none. He donated his large collections of political and campaign memorabilia, including pamphlets, buttons, stickers and posters, to the centre’s archives.

Inside the Comerford Library at the Center for Politics in the University of Virginia

Jim was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on 6 June 1959, the only son of Neil Dexter Comerford Jr and Margaret (née Dower) Comerford (1920-2016), a former navy nurse. He was seven when his father died suddenly. Margaret soon moved them to Atlanta, where Jim grew up. She later married physician Dr Mark Lindsey, who considered Jim a son.

Jim attended Marist High School, Atlanta, where he was President of the Student Council and developed a lifelong Catholic faith. He then attended the University of Virginia. There he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity; a Student Council representative; and a guest pundit for student weekly The Declaration, where he predicted the 1980 Reagan landslide state-by-state.

He majored in history and government and graduated with the class of 1981. He counted Professor Boots Mead and Professor Irby Cauthen as his mentors and he remained a life-long friend of the political analyst Professor Larry Sabato.

After earning his law degree at the University of Georgia in 1984, Jim began a legal career with a small law firm in Marietta, Georgia, and went on to practice in some of the south-east’s leading firms, specialising in government affairs. Eventually he went out on his own, creating a group of successful investment partnerships and business ventures.

When we met, he was a practicing lawyer or attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, and a counsel with Hunton and Williams LLP, a law firm with offices in 19 cities across the US, including Atlanta, and in Europe and Asia.

Jim remained close to the University of Virginia throughout his life. He was an early supporter and long-serving board member of Professor Sabato’s nationally renowned Center for Politics. He was also a member of the Atlanta selection board for the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the most prestigious scholarship at the University of Virginia.

Jim was also involved in the economic development of Sandy Springs, Georgia, and was engaged in the efforts leading to the incorporation of Sandy Springs as a city.

Jim loved being the father of three children and encouraging their successes at Blessed Trinity, Marist, Oglethorpe University, Mercer University Atlanta, Auburn University and Georgia Institute of Technology. He had a love of story-telling and had a passion for his family, his home state of Georgia and his Irish heritage.

On the battlements of Ballybur Castle, Co Kilkenny, with Jim and Camilla Comerford, Jimmy Comerford and Frank Gray

When Camilla and Jim Comerford visited Ireland with their son Jimmy 14 years ago (May 2012), I hosted them on a genealogical tour that brought them to Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin and the Comerford ancestral home at Ballybur Castle at Cuffesgrange, near Callan, Co Kilkenny.

They had been in London and Oxford the previous week. On a warm sunny, early summer afternoon in Dublin, after a thorough tour of the cathedral and the crypt, we sat for an hour or more outside the Bull and Castle on Christchurch Place and had lengthy conversations that ranged from Handel to Pugin, liturgy to architecture, and through politics and music to travel and politics.

We were guests the next day of the late Frank Gray, who bought Ballybur Castle from the Marnell family for £20,000 in 1979 and spent over three decades lovingly restoring the 16th century tower house, bringing it back to its Tudor glory.

In Cuffesgrange, I showed them the remains of a Comerford memorial from the early 17th century, rescued in the 19th century by Bishop Michael Comerford and placed in the corner wall of the parish church. Back in Kilkenny, we visited Kilkenny Castle, had lunch in the Kilkenny Design Centre, and met members of Camilla’s extended family.

Jim Comerford died on 21 April 2024 after a six-year battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Camilla (Corrigan), their sons James ‘Jimmy’ Dower Comerford Jr and Joseph ‘Joey’ Corrigan Comerford of Atlanta, their daughter Margaret ‘Margeaux’ Eileen Comerford of Seattle, and their granddaughter Abigail Genevieve. His funeral Mass took place in the Cathedral of Christ the King, Atlanta, on 24 April 2024, and he was buried at Arlington Memorial Park.

Jim and Jimmy Comerford visiting the baptistery in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in 2012 (Photograph: Patick Comerford)

The Ikerrin Crown

Brian Boru depicted wearing the ‘Comerford Crown’ or ‘Ikerrin Crown’ in Dermod O’Connor’s 1723 edition of Geoffrey Keating’s ‘The General History of Ireland’

Patrick Comerford

Introduction

The “Comerford Crown” or “Ikerrin Crown” is a long-lost archaeological artefact probably dating from the Bronze Age. It was discovered in the Devil’s Bit, near Ikerrin, Co. Tipperary, in 1692 and was taken to France by the Comerford family who owned it for over a century, until the mid-1790s, when it was lost during the ‘Reign of Terror’ in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Although it has not been seen for almost two and a half centuries – perhaps even three and a half centuries – the “Comerford Crown” or “Ikerrin Crown” remains an object of fascination. Although its function was never ascertained and remains uncertain, it became a symbol of Irish identity in the early nineteenth century, and is said to informed the design in 1843 of Daniel O’Connell’s green velvet “Repeal Cap”.

The crown is sometimes referred to by archaeologists as the “Devil’s Bit Mountain gold cap.” The “Milesian Crown” was a more popular term in the nineteenth century because of the symbol that was based on this crown or inspired by it.

The ‘Comerford Crown’ or ‘Ikerrin Crown’ depicted in the ‘Dublin Penny Journal’, Vol 1, No 9 (25 August 1832)

Despite all the speculation about the crown, it remains an enigma. The image used in a depiction of Brian Boru in 1723 is noticeably different from the image of it published over a century later in the Dublin Penny Journal (Vol 1, No 9, 25 August 1832), 140 years after it was discovered, and half a century it was said to have been lost.

These are two contradictory and irreconcilable illustrations. No-one has established with certainty either the function or fate of the crown, and the myths Joseph Comerford created for his own genealogical past make the rescuer of the crown as much a mystery as the object itself.

Château d’Anglure … it gave Joseph Comerford an estate and a French title, but what happened to the crown?

The discovery and rescue of the crown

The “Comerford Crown” or “Ikerrin Crown” was an encased gold cap or crown that was discovered 10ft underground by turf-cutters, at the Devil’s Big in Co. Tipperary in 1692. After its discovery, Joseph Comerford bought the crown, and saved it from being melted down. But who was this Joseph Comerford? And why was he in Ikerrin in 1692.

Joseph Comerford, who bought the crown, became the Marquis d’Anglure in France and claimed to be Baron of Danganmore in Ireland and the head of the Comerford family. He took the crown from Ireland to France when he bought a château in the Champagne region, and the crown may have been lost a century later during the Reign of Terror in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Joseph Comerford is an enigmatic members of the Comerford family. His origins and place in the family tree have been obscured by his own obfuscation: the family pedigree he registered in Dublin was a self-serving exercise in vanity, aimed at asserting his claim to nobility that would underpin the French aristocratic title he acquired when he bought a château and petit domain in Champagne.

The plaques he erected in the Comerford chapel in Saint Mary’s Parish Church, Callan, Co. Kilkenny, and the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Parish Church, Tamworth, Staffordshire, were proud but vain efforts by him to link the Comerford family in Co. Kilkenny with the Comberford family of Comberford Hall in the Lichfield and Tamworth area of Staffordshire.

The plaque erected by Joseph Comerford in the Comberford Chapel in the North Transept of Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Although Joseph Comerford claimed on those monuments that his family had been brought low by the ravages of civil wars in Ireland and in England, he appears to have remained in Ireland for some years after the defeat of the Jacobites in the 1690s, without any obvious social, political or financial disadvantage. While he eagerly craved acceptance in French aristocratic circles, the title he acquired has never continued in use in the Comerford family.

Joseph Comerford, the eldest son of Edward Comerford of Clonmel, Co Tipperary, was sworn a freeman of the City of Waterford, on 10 December 1686. He subsequently was commissioned a captain in the Earl of Tyrone’s regiment of foot, a Waterford regiment (despite its name) in the army of James II.

Despite the terms of the Treaty of Limerick following the defeat of the Jacobite cause, Joseph Comerford was still living in Ireland in 1692. In that year, he bought the “Ikerrin Crown,” an encased gold cap or crown weighing about 5 oz, that was discovered 10 ft underground by turf-cutters, and he saved it from being melted down.

Soon after, Joseph Comerford moved to France, and took the crown with him. As Joseph de Comerford of Clonmel, he received letters of naturalisation in France in January 1711. In exile in France, he was made a Chevalier of St Louis, bought the Anglure estate on the banks of the River Aule in Champagne, including the Château d’Anglure, and claimed the title of Marquis d’Anglure by right of purchase. He may be the Comerford who appears as Baron d’Enguemore in Reitstrap’s Armorial.

However, Joseph Comerford returned to Ireland at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when he was living in Cork, and he had moved to Dublin by April 1724, when he registered a fanciful family pedigree at the Ulster Office of Arms in Dublin Castle.

At this time, or soon after, Joseph Comerford probably erected the monument to his great-grandfather, Thomas Comerford, in Saint Mary’s Church, Callan, Co. Kilkenny, and the plaque in the Comberford Chapel in Tamworth, Staffordshire, which is dated 1725. I was involved in the commemorations in Tamworth on 1 April 2025 to mark the centenary of the plaque in the Comberford Chapel.

Joseph Comerford returned to France soon after, and on 28 November 1725, as Joseph de Comerford, he bequeathed the Anglure estate, including “the grounds and seigniories of Mesnil and Granges,” 3km west of Anglure, to his nephew, Louis Luc de Comerford.

When he died in 1729, Joseph Comerford’s will was proved in Paris. Another will, dated 19 May 1729, went to probate in Dublin that year. He was buried in the chapel at the Château d’Anglure not under the title of Marquis d’Anglure but as Baron d’Anglure et Dangermore.

Joseph Comerford and his wife Margaret (née Browne) were the parents of an only daughter, Jane Barbara. But there was no male heir to inherit his claims and titles. Instead, he designated his brother, Captain Luc Luke Comerford as his heir. In default of male heirs, Joseph settled his estates in Champagne on the heirs male of his brother Luke Comerford, and in default of such heirs male on his kinsman, Major-General John Comerford, and his male issue.

Captain Louis-Luc Comerford of Sézanne, north of Anglure, became Seigneur d’Anglure as heir to his uncle Joseph. He appears to have sold the Anglure title and estate in the mid-18th century. According to an advertisement dated 12 June 1752, a quarter of a century after Joseph Comerford’s death, Anglure was associated with the title of a barony from “time out of memory” and with the title of Marquis d’Anglure which was created in 1657.

Louis-Luc de Comerford, who was financially ruined, sold his estates, including Anglure, Mesnil and Granges-sur-Aube, and Belle-Assise, to Jean de Cabanel and retired to Sézanne, north of Anglure, where he lived in dire poverty.

After Louis-Luc Comerford died, his next brother, Captain Pierre-Edouard Comerford, used the title of Baron Dangermore (sic), but he made no pretensions to the Anglure titles. This branch of the Comerford family survived into the early nineteenth century, but died out in 1813 with the death of Captain Joseph-Alexandre-Antoine Comerford (1757-1813). Since then, the titles have never been assumed or claimed by any member of the family.

What happened to the Crown?

But what happened to the “Comerford Crown” that Joseph Comerford saved from being melted down after it was found in Ikerrin and that he took with him to Anglure in France? The eventual fate of the ‘Comerford Crown’ remains a mystery. The crown appears to have survived in safe hands for long time after Joseph’s death. In his Histoire d’Irlande (1758), the Abbé MacGeoghegan suggested it was still preserved in Anglure.

Some accounts say the crown may have been melted down for its intrinsic value in the aftermath of the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror between September 1793 and July 1794.

However, others claimed that the crown had survived the Reign of Terror. A contributor to the Dublin Penny Journal in August 1832 claimed that the crown was then still preserved in the Château d’Anglure. It was owned by Paul Emmanuel Tissandier (1805-1870). But Dr Czerwinski, whose father bought the château in 1832 from the Tissandier family, said: “I never heard anyone speak about the piece of antiquity that you refer to.”

Crown or Bronze Age “hat”

The ‘Comerford Crown’ is not the only Bronze Age “hat” recorded in Ireland. In the late 17th century, a second, similar gold crown or vessel was found nearby at the Bog of Cullen, Co. Tipperary. Known locally as the Golden Bog, due to the sheer quantity of artefacts recovered from its depths in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this morass appears to have been an important ritual site in the Late Bronze Age.

Unfortunately, very few of the objects found in the bog have survived to the present day and the gold “crown” is no different. It was bought in 1744 by a Limerick jeweller, Joseph Kinshalloe, who melted down the artefact to produce 6 ounces worth of gold. Another gold ‘crown’, described rather unusually as shaped like a shell, was also discovered at Kilpeacon, Co. Limerick, in 1821. Regrettably, this object was melted down too for bullion.

The original function of these elaborate gold objects remains uncertain. If they were indeed crowns, then they were probably worn with an inner head-dress or lining that has not survived. They probably belonged to people of high status who wore them during specific ceremonies or rituals.

Another theory suggests ‘hats’ like these adorned wooden statutes or totems that may have depicted local deities. But it has also been argued that these precious items are not in fact crowns, but instead gold bowls or vessels, as with some of the artefacts from the Eberswalde hoard in Germany, which appear too small to fit a human head.

Influence and legacy

The ‘Comerford Crown’ inspired the illustration of Brian Boru wearing the “Milesian Crown” in the frontispiece of Dermod O’Connor’s edition of Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Eirinn, published in Dublin in 1723 as The General History of Ireland. This crown was based on the ‘Comerford Crown,’ and it was used to represent the crown of the provincial kings of Ireland.

Elizabeth FitzPatrick of NUI Galway suggests that because the “Comerford Crown” was found in Munster it inspired the 18th century illustrator of Brian Bóruma “to add it to the Munster king’s royal paraphernalia”.

Over three decades later, the Abbé MacGeoghegan, James MacGeoghegan (1702-1763), in his Histoire d’Irlande (1758), described this gold crown as being in the shape of a bonnet, and added: “This curious part of antiquity was sold to Joseph Comerford and must be preserved in the Castle of Anglure, where he had bought the estate.”

By the early nineteenth century, the shamrock and the harp were the most widely used symbols of Irish identity. The Galway historian, Dr Emily Cullen of NUI Galway, shows how the harp came to be fused with the imperial crown of England, the cap of liberty, the sunburst and the “Comerford Crown” or “Milesian Crown” as one of the principal emblems of Irish identity.

This “Milesian Crown,” based on the “Comerford Crown,” was fused with the harp in an emblem used in 1840 to illustrate the frontispiece to Edward Bunting’s third edition of The Ancient Music of Ireland. This frontispiece consolidated the iconic appeal of the Milesian Crown. Bunting’s emblem of the “Milesian Crown” is based on the 1723 illustration in Dermod O’Connor’s translation of Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Eirinn, which, in turn, is based on the “Comerford Crown”.

While Bunting dedicated this third edition to Queen Victoria, he inserted the Milesian Crown above the harp with the symbol of a wakened nationalism, the sunburst, as a declaration of a separate Irish feudal tradition. Scholars point how that it is notable that the “Comerford Crown,” and not the British crown, was placed above the harp in this image. Emily Cullen points out that instead of ambiguously employing the radiated “Irish crown” above the harp, Bunting purposefully differentiated the provincial Irish crown from that of the British one, through a distinctive design.

Three years after Bunting’s use of the “Comerford Crown,” it also informed the design in 1843 of Daniel O’Connell’s green velvet “Repeal Cap,” which played a crucial iconic role in the construction of his public image.

The artists John Hogan and Henry MacManus used the “Comerford Crown” to design the green velvet “Milesian cap” or “cap of liberty” that they presented to Daniel O’Connell at the “monster meeting” on the Rath of Mullaghmast, near Athy, Co. Kildare, in 1843. An advertisement in The Nation for a copy of the cap, which was mass-produced for sale, pointed out, it was modelled upon “the old Milesian Crown of Gold, dug up AD 1692, at Barnanely, of the Devil’s Bit, County Tipperary, and brought to France by Joseph Comerford, Esq., afterward Marquis of Anglure in Champagne.”

A year later, this harp and crown became the symbol of Ireland on the membership card of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association of 1844. On that card, the harp is surrounded by the sunburst and by Irish political figures including Henry Grattan, Henry Flood, Patrick Sarsfield, Owen Roe O’Neill, Brian Boru and Ollamh Fodhla.

Ollamh Fodhla, reputedly the first Milesian king of Ireland, is wearing the “Comerford Crown” or “Milesian Crown” which is also placed beneath the harp in the central image.

The symbols of Ireland in the centre include a sword, shield, wreath of shamrock and the Milesian Crown. Saint Patrick’s head forms the stem of the device, while a smaller shamrock is inscribed “Remember 1782,” a reference to Grattan’s Parliament.

O’Connell’s followers were deeply moved by the idea of an indigenous Milesian Crown. It came to represent a modern-day Irish crown and was symptomatic of its wearer’s brazen audacity. Throughout the mid to late 1840s, Daniel O’Connell was frequently depicted a mocking way in Punch wearing this Milesian Crown.

O’Connor’s illustration of the “Comerford Crown” in 1723 also gave rise to sporadic curiosity about the artefact on the pages of journals in the nineteenth century. The Dublin Penny Journal claimed the crown was “perfectly eastern” in its “style and workmanship” and “unlike everything of the kind used in Europe within historic times.

A crowned Brian Boru on the east wall of the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

O’Connell is depicted wearing the crown in an image on the west door of Saint James’s Church, Dublin, designed by Patrick Byrne in 1844. The crown also appears on a head of Brian Boru on the walls of the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle, and as a label stop in the Church of the Holy Cross in Charleville, Co. Cork, designed by Maurice A Hennessy in 1898.

It is surprising, then, that the “Comerford Crown” did not appear in the motifs designed for the Irish House on the corner of Winetavern Street and Wood Quay, or the Oarsman in Ringsend, two Dublin pubs designed in the 1890s by my great-grandfather James Comerford (1817-1902), when his other depictions include Round Towers, Irish wolfhounds, Erin with a stingless harp, and political figures such as Grattan, Flood and O’Connell.

Daniel O’Connell wearing the ‘Milesian Crown’ in an image at the west door of Saint James’s Church, Dublin, designed in 1844 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Conclusions

Emily Cullen argues that the pairing of the Irish harp emblem with the Milesian Crown is a distinctive and neglected development in nineteenth century iconic discourses. She adds, “It is important, however, to update the Comerford Crown story for a variety of reasons, not least because the authority of this crown was challenged by some as just a decorative vessel.”

She points out that the use of the “Comerford Crown” as a symbol to stand in for the history of a provincial Irish king represents “an attempted transfer of authority to an indigenous Irish crown, a separate iconographic tradition and, ultimately, the dilution of authority of the British Crown.”

In her conclusions, she says, “The fact that there is still a degree of uncertainty about the functions of the Comerford Crown underlines the fact that the harp was juxtaposed with equivocal symbols and, thereby, implicated in speculative narratives that were rendered no less powerful for their ambivalence. Unlike, however, the ‘missing’ Comerford Crown, long transferred to Anglure in France, the Irish harp retains its symbolic authority.”

Further Reading:

Emily Cullen, ‘From the Comerford Crown to the Repeal Cap: Fusing the Irish harp symbol with eastern promise in the nineteenth century,’ in Visual Material and Print Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, ed Ciara Breathnach and Catherine Lawless (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), pp 59-72.

Elizabeth FitzPatrick, Royal inauguration in Gaelic Ireland c.1100–1600: a cultural landscape Study (Studies in Celtic History series Vol 22, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2004).

Geoffrey Keating, The General History of Ireland, translated by Dermod O’Connor (Dublin: James Carson, 1723).

Abbé James Mac Geogheghan, Histoire de l’Irlande ancienne et moderne (Paris: Antoine Boudet, 1758, vol 1), pp 100-101.

The Abbé MacGeoghegan, The History of Ireland, Ancient and Modern (tr Patrick O’Kelly (New York: DJ Sadlier, 1845), p 75.

The Dublin Penny Journal, Vol 1, No 9 (25 August 1832).

Joseph Comerford’s pedigree, Genealogical Office Ms 160, ff 102-104.

Biographical note (p 203):

Parick Comerford is an Anglican priest He has been and a former professor in Trinity College Dublin and the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. He lives in retirement near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

•This paper was first published in Under Crimblin Hill: Historical Journal of Dunkerrin Parish Historical Society Vol 5 2026 (ed Professor Salvador Ryan), pp 20-27 (Dunkerrin, Co Offaly, 29 November 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 97, Thursday 14 August 2025

‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’ (Matthew 18: 32-33) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the life and witness of Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), Carmelite friar and martyr in Auschwitz.

I am back in Stony Stratford this morning after my short-mid-week visit to Dublin. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and for reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 26) … old, worthless banknotes heaped up outside an antiques shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1 (NRSVA):

21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22 Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

23 ‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” 29 Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 29) … a collection of denarii among old Greek coins in an exhibition in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1) looks critically at the limits we place on forgiveness and the over-abundant generosity and universal scope of God’s forgiveness.

What are the limits to my capacity to understand and forgive others?

Are there limits to God’s willingness to forgive?

Forgiveness is so central to Christian faith and life, that it is emphasised throughout Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

In this reading, Saint Peter asks how many times he should forgive, and is told ‘not seven times but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,’ or, as some sources put it, seventy times seven.

In Biblical thinking, the number seven always indicates holiness, as in the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year or ‘year of release,’ and the Jubilee year that follows seven cycles of seven years.

As the former Chief Rabbi, the late Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, has said, seven is the symbol of the holy, that God exists beyond time and space.

But what about the number 70 when Christ says ‘seven times seventy’ or ‘seventy-seven times’?

Talmudic scholars approach the Torah as if it has ‘seventy faces’ (Numbers Rabbah 13: 15-16). The number 70 has sacred significance in Biblical Hebrew: 70 is the number of people who first went down to Egypt, the elders chosen by Moses, the years of King David, the Babylonian exile, the sages of the Sanhedrin, the translators of the Septuagint, the span of human life, the words of Kiddush, the nations of the world …

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy points out in The Genius of Judaism that the number 70 is ‘no ordinary number.’ He calls it the ‘secret universal.’ It represents the fullness of humanity, the ‘other universal that escorts human beings on the path of their history and to the centre of their substance.’ It is ‘the number of infinity extended.’

So, Christ tells us in this Gospel reading that divine forgiveness is to be extended ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven’ – in other words, God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

In the second part of this reading, Christ explains what he is saying in a parable that is unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel and that involves three distinct episodes:

1, A king decides to settle his accounts with his slaves or servants: the word δοῦλος (doulos) means either, so those who first heard this parable could imagine an end-of-year audit with court officials, financiers or tax collectors. One of these officials owes 10,000 talents, the equivalent to £3,358,735,524 (€3,877,551,979) today. No ordinary slave could accumulate such a debt. Of course, he is unable to clear a debt of such magnitude.

The king might have been reminded that Jewish law prohibits demanding payment from a debtor who is unable to pay (mitzvah 234; Exodus 22: 24). A lender may not embarrass a borrower by harassing him, and is forbidden to seize the debtor’s land or to sell him or his family into slavery.

When the servant seeks forgiveness, the king goes beyond the narrow constraints of rabbinical law, shows overflowing generosity, and agrees to clear off the loan.

2, Now, however, this senior official demands the repayment of a loan of three month’s wages, 100 denarii – about £6,473 (€7,473) today – from a lower-level servant. Imagine the senior official as the line manager for the official who asks for forgiveness. Once again, there is commandment not to take a pledge from a debtor by force (mitzvah 239; Deuteronomy 24: 10). The man already forgiven now refuses to forgive when it is his turn, even his obligation, and he compounds this with his use of force.

3, When the king hears about this, he retracts his original forgiveness.

After telling this parable, Christ identifies the king as God, the first servant as any Christian, and the second as anyone else.

Christ makes the point that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach. He calls us to forgive in a way that is so difficult that I am still wrestling with it.

Many of us grew up with language that chided us, so that when we did something wrong and said sorry, we were told, ‘Sorry is not enough’ or ‘Sorry doesn’t fix anything.’ Such phrases allow a hurt person to withhold forgiveness, to find comfort in their own hurt, to control us in a way that allows us to know mercilessly how much we are in need of mercy.

But we also live in a culture of half-hearted apologies that are difficult to forgive. Politicians and business leaders say they accept responsibility by resigning – so they never have to answer for their actions. Half-hearted apologies – ‘I am sorry if I have offended you’ – mean that those who are hurt feel they need to apologise for their response, their reaction, for being hurt.

There are times that I have no right to forgive, when it is not my place to forgive. I cannot forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust, because, no matter how many times I have visited places that are an intimate part of the Holocaust story, I am not one of the victims.

I cannot forgive slaveholders or mass murderers in wars and killing fields, because I am not one of their victims. On the other hand, perhaps, because I am not a victim, I might find it is not so difficult.

The true difficulties arise in my own personal life: members of my own family, lost friends, near neighbours, former colleagues I think hurt me in the past. I walk around with perceived slights, insults and hurts, like some crutch that helps the wounded, broken me to walk through this broken and hurting world.

But then I am reminded, time and again, that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

‘And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt’ (Matthew 18: 27) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 14 August 2025):

The theme this week (10 to 16 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Serving God in the Gulf’ (pp 26-27). This theme was introduced yesterday with reflections from Joyaline Rajamani, Administrator at the Church of the Epiphany, Doha, Anglican Church in Qatar.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 14 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we thank you for Joyaline. Grant her wisdom, patience, and courage to reflect Christ’s love in all she does. Bless her as a faithful steward of your calling.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Strengthen for service, Lord,
the hands that have taken holy things;
may the ears which have heard your word
be deaf to clamour and dispute;
may the tongues which have sung your praise be free from deceit;
may the eyes which have seen the tokens of your love
shine with the light of hope;
and may the bodies which have been fed with your body
be refreshed with the fullness of your life;
glory to you for ever.

Additional Collect:

Lord God,
your Son left the riches of heaven
and became poor for our sake:
when we prosper save us from pride,
when we are needy save us from despair,
that we may trust in you alone;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Almighty God,
who looked upon the lowliness of the Blessed Virgin Mary
and chose her to be the mother of your only Son:
grant that we who are redeemed by his blood
may share with her in the glory of your eternal kingdom;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflectons
Continued Tomorrow

Forgiveness and love in the face of death and mass murder … a fading rose on the fence at Birkenau (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

Kilbline Castle, near Bennetsbridge, built in the 16th century by the Comerford family

Kilbline Castle, near Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny … built by the Comerford family ca 1539, but confiscated in the 1560s (Photograph © The Irish Antiquarian, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

On a recent question on the Facebook group Comerford Genealogy, after I posted an up-to-date photograph, one member asked: ‘Weren't there initially 4 owned by the Comerford family? Ballybur, Inchohologan, Danganmore, and Kilbline’.

I thought it would be interesting to start a new, occasional series on the castles and ancestral homes of the Comerford family, beginning with the story of Kilbline Castle, Co Kilkenny, although, when this is migrated to the Comerford Genealogy site, it shall eventually become No 4 in the series.

Kilbline Castle is a fortified 16th century tower house in Co Kilkenny. It is set on the Kilbline Estate in the parish of Tullaherin, in the Barony of Gowran, about a mile south-east of Bennettsbridge.

The historian of the Diocese of Ossory, Canon William Carrigan, suggested the name of Kilbline came from Saint Blaan, an early seventh century Irish saint and the first bishop of the See of Dunblane in Scotland.

Kilbline Castle is a typical example of the tower houses that are distinctive features of the Irish landscape. It is estimated that about 3,000 tower houses were built in Ireland between 1400 and 1650. Kilbline Castle is sometimes dated to the 14th or 15th centuries, while other sources say the castle was built in 1539 and was originally owned by the Comerford family.

If the castle was first built by the Comerford family in 1539, then the most likely original proprietor was James Quemerford or Comerford (ca 1493 – post 1560) of Ballymack, Co Kilkenny, a younger brother of Richard ‘Roe’ Comerford, ancestor of the Comerford family of Ballybur.

James Comerford was Attorney for the Earl of Ormond in counties Kilkenny, Wexford, Carlow and Tipperary, from 1531. He was presented with his brother Richard ‘Roe’ Quemerford of Ballybur and the rest of the gentry of Co Kilkenny in 1537 for ‘charging of coyne and livery’.

He was in possession of Ballymartown in 1543, and held Ballymack, immediately south of Ballybur, and halfway between Kilkenny and Callan. On 26 March 1549, he was pardoned along with his brothers, Richard Comerford of Ballybur, and Patrick Quemerford and Nicholas Quemerford, who were living at Ballymack.

James Comerford was the Queen’s Attorney for Waterford in 1558, and the Sheriff of Co Kilkenny in 1549, 1555-1559, and was killed in office. Elizabeth I’s letter to Perrot in January 1585 implies he had been attainted for rebellion, but this may be a mistake for his elder son, Thomas Quemerford (ca 1523-ca 1583).

Thomas Comerford inherited both Ballymack and Kilbline Castle from his father James Comerford ca 1560. In 1566, he had a commission with his cousin, Richard ‘Oge’ Comerford of Ballybur Castle, and others to make war on Piers Grace. However, Thomas Comerford was attainted soon after, and he lost Ballymack briefly to Patrick Sherlock of Waterford, who also acquired Mothel Abbey, near Carrick-on-Suir, and also lost the townland of Kilbline.

Thomas Comerford, who was to become known as a ‘perpetual rebel and traitor,’ was pardoned on 1 March 1569. However, that summer he joined the first Desmond rebellion led by James FitzMaurice FitzGerald. The rebellion lasted for two years, and Thomas Comerford was attainted again in 1571. All his lands were granted to John Prescott in 1575, but in 1580 they were granted to Francis Lovell, and this was confirmed in 1583.

Thomas Comerford married Margaret Cowley, but they had children and his claims and interests passed to his brother, Henry Quemerford or Comerford (ca 1525-1590) of Ballymack. Henry’s family managed to hold on to Ballymack for another century, but never recovered Kilbline Castle.

Henry Comerford’s descendants included: the Revd Thomas Comerford (ca 1596/1598-1635) of Ballymack, his grandson, who was Vicar of Attanagh and Vicar of The Rower, Co Kilkenny; Thomas Comerford (died ca 1627/1629), who is commemorated in Saint Mary’s Church, Callan, with a monument that includes the coat-of-arms of the Comberford family of Comberford, Staffordshire; Edward ‘Ned’ Comerford (ca 1600-(ca1660), MP for Callan; Major-General John Comerford (ca 1665-1725) of Madrid and Badajoz; Enrique Comerfort, Conde de Bryas; and Doña Josefa Eugenia Maria Francisca de Sales (‘Josefina’) de Comerford (1794-1865) of Barcelona and Seville, a femme fatale in the Spanish revolutionary politics of the 19th century.

Kilbline Castle was never recovered by the Comerford family after it was confiscated in the 1560s (Photograph © The Irish Antiquarian, 2020)

As for Kilbline Castle, it was never recovered by the Comerford family, and the subsequent owners were members of the Shortall family who also owned Rathardmore Castle, Co Kilkenny. A large limestone chimneypiece on the first floor carries the date 1580 so it is possible this is when the building was completed, after it had been lost by the Comerford family.

Thomas Shortall of Rathardmore died in 1628 and soon after his son and heir Peter Shortall moved to Kilbline Castle and lived there. His estates, extending to 1,500 acres, were forfeited by the Cromwellians in 1653 and his sons ordered to be sent to Connaught. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, it is said, one of the sons of Peter Shortall seems to have returned to Kilbline.

William Candler, from Newcastle, Northumberland, was as a colonel in Cromwell’s army in Ireland in 1649-1653. He received grants of land in counties Wexford, Offaly (King’s County) and Kilkenny. His principal grants of land in Co Kilkenny included 620 acres in Dunamaggin Parish, 70 acres in Kilbeacon Parish, near Mullinavat, and Kilbline Castle. He and his wife, the widowed Anne Villiers, were the parents of two sons, and their youngest son, John Candler, lived at Kilbline.

William Candler’s second son, Thomas Candler, was an officer in the Williamite Wars in 1690-1691 and later lived at Callan Castle. He was the father of four sons, the youngest of whom Daniel who left Ireland with his wife Hannah ca 1735. They first moved to North Carolina before moving to Bedford, Virginia. Daniel died in 1765 and is buried in the Quaker cemetery at South River Meeting, near his home; Hanna lived to the age of 105, outliving her husband by 40 years – she died in 1800 and is buried with her husband. Their great, great, great-grandson was Asa Griggs Candler, who in 1888 bought the formula for Coca Cola.

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, William Candler’s two eldest sons were ordained in the Church of Ireland: the eldest, the Ven Henry Candler, became Archdeacon of Ossory; the second son, the Revd Dr William Candler, was Rector of Eirke, lived in Castlecomer and died in 1753. The third son, Thomas Candler, lived in Kilbline Castle until he died in 1740.

Kilbline Castle was owned by the Shortall, Cadler, Ryan and Lannon families (Photograph © The Irish Antiquarian, 2020)

Kilbline Castle continued to be occupied with a Ryan family living in the castle until 1840, before it passed by marriage into the Lannon family, who lived there until 1979. The castle remains in private ownership.

In many ways, Kilbline Castle is a typical Irish tower house. It is five storeys high, with round bartizans or wall-mounted turrets at each corner of the east front and a slender chimney-stack between them.

A chimney-piece in the tower is dated 1580 and there is an oak-panelled room on the south-east corner of the ground floor. However, the most significant feature of Kilbline Castle architecturally is a wonderful panelled room on the south-east corner of the ground floor, with oak that may date from the late 17th or early 18th century. All the wall panelling is intact and in remarkably good condition, although the ceiling is now covered in tongue-and-groove boards. The old chimneypiece is marred only by a shelf added at a later date.

The surrounding bawn wall survives in part, with early brick walls with blank arches. But some sections were demolished as late as the 20th century when modern farm sheds were being erected.

Kilbline Castle continued to be lived in up to a few decades ago. At some point, a two storey three-bay house was added at the west end of the tower house and a further single storey structure adjoining it.

The present owners do not live in the castle and it has been empty for some time, but they are aware of its importance. Although they have are no plans to restore the castle, the interior is said to be relatively intact and in remarkably good condition.

Kilbline Castle is a protected or listed structure with Kilkenny County Council. However, it is not open to or accessible to the public.

Kilbline Castle is about a mile south-east of Bennetsbridge, Co Kilkenny (Photograph © Irish Tower Houses, 2022)

Castles and Houses in this series:

1, Ballybur Castle, Cuffesgrange, Co Kilkenny

2, Ballymack, Co Kilkenny

3, Danganmore Castle, Co Kilkenny

4, Kilbline Castle, Co Kilkenny

5, Castleinch or Inchyolaghan, Co Kilkenny

6, Coolgreany House, near Castlewarren, Co Kilkenny

Kilbline Castle, near Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny, is a protected or listed structure but is not open to the public (Photograph: Paddy O’Shea, Irish Castles / Wikipedia CCL)

This illustrated essay was posted on Comerford Way (27 May 2025), and in the occasional series ‘Comerford castles and ancestral homes’ on Comerford Family History (backdated to 18 June 2009)

Nicholas Comberford’s maps of the ‘Bay of Mexico’ defy Trump’s delusions about the ‘Gulf of America’

Manuscript map of North America, ca late 1630s, pen and ink and watercolour on parchment (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund) … Nicholas Comberford was using the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ almost 400 years ago

Patrick Comerford

The Trump regime’s petty insistence on labelling the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’ is both mendacious and egregious, imposing a name that has been concocted to mollify a petulant man who continues to pursue imperious gestures and to sign egregious edicts for no other reason than to compensate for his inner insecurities and his low self-esteem.

Executive Order 14172 on 20 January tried to the change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in US federal government usage, despite the fact that it has been known as the Gulf of Mexico since the 1550s, a name derived from Mexica, the Nahuatl word for the Aztecs.

Associated Press journalists have been banned indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One because AP decided to continue using Gulf of Mexico. The White House accused AP of ‘commitment to misinformation’ and ‘irresponsible and dishonest reporting’, and Trump says AP continues to be barred ‘until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America.’

Historians, geographers and cartographers, as well as journalists, have produced maps that are centuries-old using names such as the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Bay of Mexico, or simply the Bay of Mexico. No historical map names the place the Gulf of America. Why? Simply because there was no USA back then.

The names Gulf of Mexico and Bay of Mexico appear on maps long before Jamestown, before Plymouth Rock, and over 200 years before the Declaration of Independence, and more than 250 years before the Louisiana Purchase, which was the first time the US controlled any land even bordering the Gulf.

The name Mexico refers to the people later referred to as Aztecs, when what is now Mexico was part of Colonial Spain. The name ‘Golfo de Mexico’ first appears in 1550 on a map now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and in an historical account in 1552.

Europeans have used the name the Gulf of Mexico, and the corresponding terms in Spanish and French, Golfo Mexicano and Golphe du Mexique, with consistency from the mid-17th century, although Spanish geographers continued for a time to also use the name of Golfo de Nueva España.

In recent days, I have come across two versions of the earliest English-language maps to refer to the Bay of Mexico or Gulf of Mexico. They have been dated to the 1630s or, more likely, the 1640s or the 1650s, and the cartographic historian and antiquarian Philip D Burden has recently identified Nicholas Comberford (ca 1600-1673) of Stepney, the 17th century Kilkenny-born map maker as the creator of these maps.

One version of the map with the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ is a manuscript map of North America in pen and ink and watercolour on parchment. It is in the Yale Center for British Art, thanks to the Paul Mellon Fund, and it has been dated to the late 1630s.

Another version, recently sold by Clive A Burden Ltd of Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, has been labelled ‘Map of the Bay of Mexico &c’, has been dated to London ca 1650, and has been identified as the work of Nicholas Comberford.

This second map measures 220 x 430 mm on a sheet measuring 250 x 465 mm, and is in ink with green and yellow watercolour wash on parchment. It is in good condition and has an ink notation, ‘This vellam and paper I brought with me out of England as I remember about 18 yeares past the vellam decay’d through the moisture of the place’.

It was sold recently as stock number 9601 by Clive A Burden Ltd rare map dealers. The business was founded by the late Clive A Burden in 1966 and is one of the longest established dealers in antique maps, atlases, books and rare decorative prints, with a particular focus are the British Isles and North America.

Nicholas Comberford’s works have been catalogued in the British Library and are found in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the New York Public Library, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and some other museums and libraries. He is a widely-acclaimed, leading and important member of the London group of chart-makers, who used similar colours, patterns and techniques, worked on vellum, and lived close to the dockyards at Stepney and Wapping on the Thames. They have come to be called the Thames School.

He was born in Kilkenny ca> 1600, and, according to his own account, his father was Nicholas Comerford, the ‘King’s Gaoler’ at Kilkenny, and his grandfather was Garret Comerford (ca 1550-1604) of Inchiolohan or Castleinch, the Queen’s Attorney-at-Laws for Connaught, MP for Callan, Second Baron of the Exchequer and Chief Justice of Munster.

Nicholas was a life-long member of the Drapers’ Company in London and his maps charted the world from the East Indies and India to Brazil and the coast of North America. He may well have been the first person to create English-language maps that show Borneo, including the area that is now Sarawak and the place where Kuching would later develop.

However, unlike the other members of the Thames School, Nicholas Comberford was not an Englishman, but a Kilkenny-born Irishman, who, as well as being overlooked until recently by cartographers and art historians alike, has been overlooked too in his native county.

The Town Hall in Callan, Co Callan, once held the Civic Mace presented by Edward Comerford … Edward Comerford and Lord Maltravers were MPs for Call in in 1634-1635 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Philip D Burden joined his father in the business in 1979. He wrote and published in 1996 and 2007 a definitive two volume work, The Mapping of North America. It was the first work to list all known printed maps relating to North America up to the year 1700.

Burden argues convincingly that this remarkable English manuscript map of North America was probably prepared ca 1650, in conjunction with a proposal to establish a colony in North Carolina (‘Carolana’). The fact that the manuscript was drawn on costly vellum, as opposed to paper, strongly suggests it was prepared as an official document for a key figure involved in the proposed settlement.

He says the idiosyncratic detail of the map strongly suggests a connection with John Farrah, mapmaker, and former Deputy Treasurer of the Virginia Company, who was very active in ‘Carolana’ affairs at this time.

The English colony of ‘Carolana’ originated in a grant by Charles I in 1629 to Sir Robert Heath, Solicitor General of England (1621), Attorney General (1625) and a member of the council of the Virginia Company.

Charles I named the new territory ‘Carolana’ after himself. Heath had no success in attracting settlers and in 1638, he assigned his rights to Henry Frederick Howard (1608-1652), Lord Maltravers and from 1640 Earl of Arundel, and MP for Callan, Co Kilkenny, Edward Comerford in the Irish Parliament in 1634-1635; Edward Comerford was MP for Callan again in 1639-1649

Lord Maltravers had many interests in the American colonies. He was a member of the New England Company and sought royal support for the English West India Company in 1637. Interest in North Carolina expanded after the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649.

A promotional tract was published in May in a London newspaper, The Moderate Intelligencer, entitled ‘A Description of ‘Carolana’ by a ‘Well-Willer’. A similar tract, William Bullock’s Virginia Impartially Examined, was published a few weeks earlier and was dedicated to Lord Maltravers and Lord Baltimore.

Lord Maltravers, was MP for Callan with Edward Comerford, and planned to colonise Norh Carolina

By far the most important of the ‘Carolana’ promotional tracts came in 1650 as Edward Williams’s Virgo Triumphans, or Virginia richly and truly valued; more especially the South part thereof: viz. The fertile Carolana … (London: John Stevenson, 1650).

Williams’s publication was associated with John Farrar of Geding, Huntingdonshire, formerly Deputy Treasurer for the Virginia Company. He was the author of a number of maps of Virginia at this time, when ‘Carolana’ was often regarded as South Virginia.

Farrar’s map in 1651 uses the name ‘Carolana’ to the region between the Roanoke and the Chowan Rivers. His map is most famous for its inclusion of a great ‘The Sea of China and the Indies’ immediately beyond the Appalachian Mountains. This detail would have been of great interest to Lord Maltravers, who held nominal title to all the land included in the original grant, which extended far beyond those mountains. Farrar’s map claims any successful colony in ‘Carolana’ would have access to ports on this western sea, and with trade with ‘China and the Indies’.

The English manuscript map includes a much vaster area than Farrar’s map – virtually all of North America. However, on the Englishman manuscript, the great trans-Appalachian sea is called ‘The South Sea’, not ‘The Sea of China and the Indies’.

Both the Farrar map and the English manuscript map include the Nansemond River, in Southside Virginia. The Nansemond is one of only four placenames given for Virginia on the English manuscript, along with Chesapeake, Jamestown and ‘Accomack. Burden says all the evidence points to the English manuscript as having been prepared in conjunction with the 1649 proposal to establish a permanent colony in ‘Carolana’.

The fact that there is no sign of the English colonies of New York and New Jersey (founded 1664, and the entire region between the Hudson from the Delaware is labelled the New Netherland helps Burden to be even more precise in dating the map. Fort Orange (founded in 1624), the Hudson River and Helgate are named. Long Island is shown divided by a channel and is similar in form to Sir Robert Dudley’s map of New England (1647), while Delaware (‘De la Warr’) Bay and River are given their present name, first introduced on Lord Baltimore’s map (1635).

He points out too that name ‘Carolana’ was used consistently in England for the region south of Virginia until 1663, when a new grant from Charles II used the spelling Carolina.

In conclusion, Burden suggests the map is no earlier than 1634, the date of the founding of Maryland, and no later than 1664, when the English conquest turned New Netherland into New York.

Burden also believes that the map’s calligraphy was the work of ‘two distinct hands’. He a ‘major chart maker’ would have been a logical choice for such a seemingly important map, and says: ‘A study of the Thames school reveals that it is not uncommon for charts to be unsigned or undated … Chartmakers tended to have geographical areas of expertise and a study of the time frame and region would tend to point to Nicholas Comberford. He was the only map maker identifiable during this time frame who produced charts of North America. There are similarities of lettering also, particularly noticeable with the ‘R’ and ‘A’.’

Nicholas Comberford, however, was known for being decorative, so this would not have been a major production of his, and seems to suggest the map may date ca 1649 to 1651.

‘The South Part of Virginia’ (Nicholas Comberford, 1657)

The connection that Lord Maltravers shared with the Comerford family and with Callan may partly explain the commissions Nicholas Comberford received for maps associated with Carolina, and subsequently he completed two further maps showing Carolina.

His map of the ‘The South Part of Virginia’ was produced in 1657. It is a single sheet of vellum, measuring 38 x 50 cm is mounted on two hinged boards, each 39 x 25 cm.

This chart is in the Heathcote collection. Another copy with slight differences but of the same date is in the New York Public Library.

‘The south part of Virginia now the north part of Carolina’ (Nicholas Comberford, 1657)

Another map of ‘The south part of Virginia now the north part of Carolina’ was made by Nicholas Comberford in 1657. This map in the New York Public Library, is similar to his map, ‘The south part of Virginia’ (1657) and is in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, but the signature reads: ‘Nicholas C[o]mberford fe[c]itt anno 1657.’

These two maps record for the first time many names that are still in use. Some of them, such as ‘Battis Ponte’ on Pamlico River, were probably given by Captain Nathaniel Battis, an early explorer, landowner and settler.

In the title of the New York map, the words ‘now the north part of Carolina’ were added in a later hand some time after the grant of Carolina in 1663.

Nicholas Comberford is a key figure in 17th century art in England, but he is also an important figure in explaining how we came to understand the way the world was explored, mapped, charted and named by Europeans and by English-speaking travellers and adventurers in the mid-17th century.

Only the foolhardy ignore the facts of history, and only the deluded ignore the reality of geography. As I continue to learn more about how his work was so influential as a mapmaker, cartographer and geographer, I can only muse if the name ‘Bay of Mexico’ was good enough for Nicholas Comberford and the Comerford family almost 400, thn thee name ‘Gulf of Mexico’ should be good enough today for an upstart like Donald Trump, his acolytes and sychophants in the Oval Office and his MAGA minions.

Nicholas Comberford, ‘Map of the Bay of Mexico &c’, London, ca 1650, 220 x 430 mm on a sheet 250 x 465 mm, ink with green and yellow watercolour wash on parchment