Two windows in Pusey House remember an Irish-born architect and his son who died on the ‘RMS Leinster’

Pusey House, Oxford, was designed by the architect Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920), who was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During my two recent days in hospital in Oxford – the John Radcliffe Hospital and the Churchill Hospital – over the past two weeks or so, I have ended each day attending Evensong in the Chapel of the Resurrection in Pusey House.

Last Friday evening, I noticed two sets of two-light windows near the chapel that commemorate two architects, father and son, with intimate links with Pusey House and with strong Irish identities.

Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920), the architect of Pusey House, was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly. His only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was killed when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed and sunk off Dublin a mere month before the end of World War I.

The Irish-born architect Temple Lushington Moore was commissioned to design the chapel and college buildings at Pusey House in 1911 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Pusey House on St Giles’, Oxford, is firmly rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and is celebrating its 140th anniversary throughout the academic year 2024-2025. It was founded in 1884 in memory of Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and, for 40 years, a leading figure in the Oxford Movement.

The first principal of Pusey House was Charles Gore (1853-1932) in 1884-1893. Gore edited Lux Mundi in 1889, delivered the Bampton Lectures in 1891, and founded the Community of the Resurrection at Pusey House in 1892. Later, he became Bishop of Worcester and the first Bishop of Birmingham, before returning to Oxford as Bishop of Oxford.

At first, Pusey House occupied two townhouses on the present site on St Giles’ from 1884 to 1912. In 1903, a Leeds solicitor, John Cudworth, left a bequest of £70,000 to Pusey House, which then had a growing ministry to the university. When Darwell Stone (1859-1941) was Principal (1909-1934), the Irish-born architect Temple Moore was commissioned in October 1911 to design new college and chapel buildings.

Two pairs of two-light windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorate Temple Lushington Moore and his only son Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Moore has been described as ‘England’s leading ecclesiastical architect from the mid-Edwardian years’. The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner said that he was ‘always sensitive in his designs and often interesting.’

His designs reflect his Anglo-Catholic practice and values. His work can be seen across England, particularly in the North. He is known for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built about 1890 and 1917 and he also restored many churches and designed church fittings.

He designed about 40 new churches, including the Anglican cathedral in Nairobi, restored older churches, and made alterations and additions to others, and designed fittings and furniture for many church interiors. He also designed and altered country houses, schools, vicarages, parish halls, a court house, and memorial and churchyard crosses.

The windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorating Temple Lushington Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920) was born in Tullamore, Co Offaly, on 7 June 1856, the son of an army officer, Major-General George Frederick Moore (1817-1884), and Charlotte Reilly (1827-1922), the youngest daughter of John Lushington Reilly, of Scarvagh House, Co Down, and Louisa Hancock Temple of Watertown, Co Westmeath. Charlotte Reilly was also related to Power Le Poer Trench (1770-1839), the last Church of Ireland Archbishop of Tuam, and to Archbishop William Alexander of Armagh.

So the names Temple and Lushington come from his mother’s side of the family, with ancestral roots in Co Down, Co Westmeath and Co Galway.

Moore grew up in Scotland, moved to London in 1875, and was articled to the architect George Gilbert Scott jr (1839-1897), known as ‘the Middle Scott’. Although Moore set up his own practice in 1878, he continued to work closely with Scott, helping to complete his works when Scott’s health deteriorated.

From the early 1880s he travelled widely studying buildings on the continent, chiefly in Germany, France and Belgium. He was particularly impressed by the great mediaeval brick churches of north Germany, echoes of which can be found in some of his own impressively austere designs.

Moore married Emma Storrs Wilton (1856-1938), the eldest daughter of the Revd Richard Wilton of Londesborough, in 1884.

Moore is known for his Gothic Revival churches built in 1890-1917. He also restored many churches and designed church fittings. The National Heritage List for England designates at least 34 of Moore’s new churches as listed buildings. Two of these, Saint Wilfrid’s Church, Harrogate, and All Saints, Stroud, are listed at Grade I, and at least 16 of the others are at Grade II*. His other works include the restoration of the Treasurer’s House and Saint William’s College, York.

Stuart Kinsella of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, has also identified at least two cathedral and two churches in Ireland, one of each in Co Armagh and Co Galway, where Moore designed repairs and improvements: Dumore, Church, Co Galway (1887), Acton Church, Poyntzpass, Co Armagh (1890-1891), the Bishop’s Chapel in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh (1890-1891), and Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam (1894).

Moore was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1905, and his pupils included Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), son of George Gilbert Scott jr.

The windows by Henry Victor Milner in Pusey House commemorating Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Moore designed a large Gothic building around a quadrangle for Pusey House. The centrepiece is the two vaulted chapels separated by a stone pulpitum, based on those found in ‘mediaeval Franciscan priories.’

Moore’s only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was articled to his father, worked with him on his designs for Pusey House, and was expected to continue the practice. The Chapel and part of the Library were complete by 1914, and most of the remaining portions of the building were finished in 1918.

But Richard Moore was killed in the closing days of World War I. He had enlisted as a private in the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and was a military passenger on the RMS Leinster when it was sunk by torpedoes in the Irish Sea on the morning of 10 October 1918. The Kingstown-Holyhead mailboat, was 16 miles out of Dublin that morning heading for Holyhead when it was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat 123.

The RMS Leinster was carrying 771 passengers and crew. They included a crew of 76, 22 postal sorters from Dublin working in the ship’s onboard postal sorting room, and 180 civilian passengers, men, women, and children. The greatest number of passengers on board, however, were service personnel. Many of them like Richard Moore were going on leave.

Richard Moore was just 27 and was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin. Officially, 501 people died in the sinking, making it both the greatest ever loss of life in the Irish Sea and the highest ever casualty rate on an Irish owned ship. The dead are remembered at the RMS Leinster Memorial in Dun Laoghaire, and for many years by the Leinster Memorial Church at the Seamen’s Institute (1919-1923) on the corner of Eden Quay and Marlborough Street, Dublin, designed by WM Mitchell & Sons.

One of the inscriptions on the paired windows in Pusey House reads: ‘To the Glory of God and in loving memory of Richard Temple Moore, Royal Wilts Yeomanry, Drowned on SS Leinster Oct 10 1918 aged 27 years. Only son of Temple Moore, Architect, and his partner on this building.’

The inscription on the windows in Pusey House commemorating Richard Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temple Moore had lived his later life in Hampstead, in Downshire Hill and then at 46 Well Walk, where he died on 30 June 1920. He was buried in the churchyard at Saint John’s Church, Hampstead, which he had altered in 1912. His son-in-law Leslie Thomas Moore continued his practice and completed some of his commissions.

The second set of wording on the paired windows in Pusey House reads: ‘ADMG and in memory of Temple Moore, Architect of this building. Died June 30 1920 aged 64.’

Temple Moore’s south range of the quadrangle at Pusey House remained unexecuted at the time of his death, and was only finished in 1925 to sympathetic designs by John Duke Coleridge (1879-1934).

The smaller Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was reordered between 1935 and 1939 by Sir Ninian Comper (1864-1960). Comper and Moore were both invested in medievalism and, more broadly, in the richness of architectural revivalism. Comper’s work in the chapel includes a gilded baldacchino surmounted by the Risen Christ and attendant angels, and the stained glass in the east window.

The inscription on the windows in Pusey House commemorating Temple Moore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The two two-ight windows in Pusey House commemorating Temple Moore and his son Richard are by Henry Victor Milner (1866-1944), who painted windows and church furnishings for many of Moore’s churches.

Milner worked for Burlison and Grylls for some time, and his work with Moore in his churches from 1887 on seems to have been commissioned independently.

The architectural historian Harry Goodhart-Rendel once described Pusey House as the best specimen of Gothic design in the city of Oxford. Pusey House continues its work as the centre of Anglo-Catholicism in Oxford but, far from being an architectural showpiece, Pusey House Chapel remains a place of living worship, where the offices are chanted and the Mass is celebrated every day.

The former Leinster Memorial Church on Eden Quay in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

32 Six Boys from Ballaghadereen with the Same Parents … but who was Born the Legitimate Heir?

FIGURE 11: All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman: Charles French and Catherine Maree were married here for a second time in 1854 (photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

In 1869, six Irish brothers arrived as boarders at Downside Abbey, the Benedictine-run Catholic public school in Somerset, near Bath. Charles, John, William, Arthur, Richard and John French were all born almost a year apart: 1851, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1857 and 1858.Their father, Charles French, the third Lord de Freyne, had died the previous year, and in the style of the aristocracy of the day, each boy was enrolled with the honorific prefix of ‘the Honorable’ before his given name.

They must have appeared like peas in a pod. But back at their family home in Frenchpark, outside Ballaghadereen, County Roscommon, it was still not clear which of these six boys was the rightful heir to the family title. Who would be the fourth Lord de Freyne?

Charles French was born on 21 October 1851, the eldest son of Charles French and Catherine Maree; John followed on 13 March 1853, and William John French on 21 April 1854. Surely, as the eldest son, Charles should have been enrolled at Downside as Lord de Freyne, successor to his father’s title and estates? But the lawyers were at work.

It transpired the parents of these six boys had been married not once but twice – to each other. Which was the legitimate marriage and who was born the legitimate heir to the family title?

These questions continued to entertain legal minds into the following decade, and the family title, Baron de Freyne, of Coolavin in County Sligo, remained in a Victorian limbo. The Roll of the House of Lords, which was issued each year, shows blanks against the name of the holder of the de Freyne peerage in 1875 and 1876, indicating the matter was still undecided almost a decade after the boys’ father had died. As the legal wrangles continued, the vast French estates in County Roscommon were administered on behalf of the family by Valentine Blake Dillon, Crown Solicitor for County Sligo.

Dillon’s daughter Nannie later married the third of these boys, John French, and he was a brother of theYoung Ireland politician John Blake Dillon (1814–1866). But he was also familiar with family disputes over heirs and titles: the succession to the Dillon title of Earl of Roscommon had been challenged twice in the 1790s, twice again in the nineteenth century, and once more with the death of the last earl in 1850. The confusions in the French family tree were as complicated and as twisted as those in the Dillon family tree, and both are extremely difficult to disentangle.

The boys’ father, Charles French (1790–1860), 3rd Baron de Freyne of Coolavin, was born into the French family of Frenchpark House, and for many generations, members of the family sat in the Irish House of Commons as MPs for County Roscommon. John French, MP for Roscommon, was about to be given a seat in the Irish House of Lords as Baron Dangar when he died in 1775 before formalities were finalised.

His younger brother, Arthur (1728–1799),also MP for Roscommon, turned down the offer of the same peerage. But eventually a title came into the family when Arthur French (1786–1856), MP for Roscommon (1821–32),was made Baron de Freyne, of Artagh,County Roscommon, in 1839. However, Arthur and his wife Mary McDermott had no children, and when Arthur was widowed, it was obvious the title would die with him. He was given a new but similar title in 1851 as Baron de Freyne, of Coolavin in County Sligo. This time, however, his younger brothers, John, Charles and Fitzstephen French, were named heirs to the title, in the hope that this branch of the French family would always have a titled representative.

When Lord de Freyne died in 1856,the older title, dating from 1839, died out, but the newer title, handed out in 1851, was inherited by his first younger brother, the Rev. John French (1788–1863). He was the Rector of Goresbridge, County Kilkenny, and was more interested in breeding Irish red setters than either his parish or the House of Lords. When he died in 1863, the family title passed to the next surviving brother, Charles French (1790–1868), as the third Lord de Freyne.

Charles was happily married with a large family of seven children, six sons and a daughter. It must have seemed there would be no problem of the family estate and the family title having male heirs.

On 13 February 1851, when he was in his sixties, Charles French married a local, illiterate woman, Catherine Maree from Fairymount. She has been described as a ‘peasant girl’ who was born around 1830 or 1831. He was more than three times her age: she was 20, he was almost 61, and the marriage was performed by a local Catholic priest. Catherine and Charles quickly had three children, one after another: Charles (1851), John (1853) and William John French (1854). By the time William was born on 21 April 1854, it was obvious that Charles and his children were in line to the family title and estates, and the legal validity of the marriage was questioned: Catherine was a Roman Catholic, Charles was a member of the Church of Ireland, and the surviving legacy of the Penal Laws, even in the 1850s, meant a member of the Church of Ireland could only legitimately marry in the Church of Ireland.

Charles and Catherine were quietly married a second time in 1854 in the hope of legitimising their three children and ensuring succession to the title and estates. This second wedding, on 17 May 1854 in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin, was performed by the Rev. William Maturin. Charles gave his address as the Albert Hotel, Dominick Street, Dublin, and Catherine gave hers as Anna Villa, North Circular Road, making them residents of the parish. He was 63 and she was 23; he describes himself as a bachelor, she as a spinster, although their third child had been born four weeks earlier. She was illiterate and signed the register with an X.

Charles and Catherine had four more children: Arthur French (1855–1913), Richard Patrick French (1857–1921), Robert French (1858–1920), and Mary Josephine French (1859–1919), who married Valentine Joseph Blake (1842–1912). Lord de Freyne celebrated his 68th birthday on the day his youngest son was born in 1858. He died on 28 October 1868, and in 1869, all six boys arrived as boarders at Downside to be educated as Catholics, despite the confusion of their parents’ marriages.

But it was still uncertain which son was going to succeed to the family title. Eventually, lawyers decided the 1851 marriage was invalid and any children born in that marriage were illegitimate. The first three sons continued to use the prefix ‘The Hon’, reserved for the legitimate children of a peer. But Arthur French, the first son born after the 1854 marriage, succeeded as 4th Baron de Freyne. His mother, the former Catherine Maree, died on 13 November 1900.

Arthur French was known as a cruel landlord. When his tenants refused to pay their rent, he took leading members of the Irish Party to court in 1902, accusing them of incitement. He had the doubtful pleasure of reading his own obituary in The Times on 11 September 1913. On 23 September 1913, The Times reported: ‘Lord de Freyne, whose death was wrongly announced last Thursday week, died yesterday morning at his residence, Frenchpark, Co Roscommon, in his 59th year’.

Arthur’s older brothers, excluded by law from inheriting the titles and estates, continued to live as though their parents’ first marriage was legitimate: Charles, the eldest son, was MP for County Roscommon (1873–80); John, the second son, was a Resident Magistrate for Kerry, Limerick and Roscommon; all three used the prefix ‘the Hon,’ asserting the legitimacy of their parents’ first marriage. John French died on 23 May 1916, and the family is remembered in a brass plaque in the south porch of the Church of the Holy Name on Beechwood Avenue in Ranelagh, Dublin, where his widow insisted on describing him as the legitimate-born son of a peer, ‘The Honble John French’.

Sources and Further Reading:

Burke’s Peerage, Debrett’s Peerage, various editions, s.v. ‘de Freyne’.
Parish Register, All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin.
The Times (London), 11 September 1913, 23 September 1913.

FIGURE 12: Frenchpark, near Ballaghaderreen, Co. Roscommon: the house was demolished in the 1970s and the rubble was used as infill for a new creamery building

‘Six Boys from Ballaghadereen with the Same Parents … but who was Born the Legitimate Heir?’ is Chapter 32 in Salvador Ryan (ed), Birth, Marriage and Death among the Irish, Dublin: Wordwell, 288 pp, ISBN: 978-1-913934-61-3, €25, pp 144-148

Praying in Easter with USPG: 4, Wednesday, 15 April 2020

The Resurrection depicted in a stained glass window in All Saints’ Church in Grangegorman, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Throughout Lent this year, I used the USPG Prayer Diary, Pray with the World Church, for my morning prayers and reflections. USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is the Anglican mission agency that partners churches and communities worldwide in God’s mission to enliven faith, strengthen relationships, unlock potential, and champion justice. It was founded in 1701.

I have decided to continue this theme throughout this week, the first week of Easter.

Throughout this week (12 to 18 April 2020), the USPG Prayer Diary takes as its theme, ‘Living with a World of Difference: Alleluia.’ This theme was introduced on Easter morning by the Revd Canon Richard Bartlett, USPG’s Director of Mission Engagement.

Wednesday 15 April 2020:

Lord, we thank you for all the variety and diversity you brought into the world you created. Help us to appreciate it and learn to share our gifts with each other.

The Readings: Acts 3: 1-10; Psalm 105: 1-9; Luke 24: 13-35.

The Easter Collect:

Almighty God,
through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ
you have overcome death
and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:
Grant that, as by your grace going before us
you put into our minds good desires,
so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect;
through Jesus Christ our risen Lord
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Why did two people marry each other twice in two different churches?

The Church of the Holy Name on Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh … a memorial in the south porch recalls a family disinherited because of a Catholic marriage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to the Church of the Holy Name on Beechwood Avenue earlier this week, I realised how this church was a fashionable venue for suburban weddings in south Dublin about 100 years ago.

Two former Taosaigh were married here – Seán Lemass and Charles J Haughey – and Padraic Pearse was supposed to be the best man at the wedding here of another 1916 leader, Thomas MacDonagh and Muriel Gifford in 1912, but he forget to turn up on the wedding day.

But a plaque in the south porch also recalls another wedding – or rather, the two weddings of the parents of John French. Their first wedding caused a social stir and resulted in the children being declared illegitimate; the second wedding served to illustrate the dying pangs of the Penal Laws many decades after Catholic Emancipation, and stirred a lengthy debate about who were the legitimate heirs to an old family title.

That brass plaque in the south porch also conveys the tragic consequences of World War I for one family:

In loving memory of
The Honble John French RM
Queenstown,
who died 23 May 1916, and his children
Major Charles John French,
King’s Shropshire Light Infantry,
Died of wounds in France 2 July 1916.
Valentine Douglas French
Died of wounds in France 16 June 1915, and
Ismay Fetherston French who died at Carrig, Queenstown, 7 August 1909
Laura Mary O’Hara Died 10th March 1919
Erected by his Wife and Children.

The Hon John French (1853-1916) was born into a landed and titled family on 13 March 1853, the eldest son of Charles French (1790-1860), 3rd Baron de Freyne of Coolavin. The family lived at Frenchpark House, near Boyle, Co Roscommon, and for many generations members of the family sat in the Irish House of Commons as MPs for Co Roscommon.

John French, MP for Co Roscommon, was about to be given a seat in the Irish House of Lords as Baron Dangar in 1775, but he died before the peerage was formally created.

His younger brother, Arthur (1728-1799), also an MP for Co Roscommon, turned down the offer of the peerage originally intended for his brother. But eventually a title came into the family when his grandson, Arthur French (1786-1856), MP for Roscommon (1821-1832) was made Baron de Freyne, of Artagh, Co Roscommon, in 1839.

But Arthur and his wife Mary McDermott had no children, and when Arthur was widowed it became obvious that the title would die with him. So, he was given a new but similar title in 1851 as Baron de Freyne, of Coolavin in Co Sligo. This time, however, his younger brothers, John, Charles and Fitzstephen French, were named as heirs to the title, in the hope that this branch of the French family would never be without a titled representative.

Lord de Freyne died in 1856, five years after the new title had been created. The older title, dating from 1839, died out, but the newer title, handed out in 1851, and was inherited by his first younger brother, the Revd John French (1788-1863), who became the second Baron de Freyne.

The second Lord de Freyne was Rector of Grange Sylvae or Goresbridge in Co Kilkenny, and seems to have been more interested in breeding Irish red setters than attending to his parish or to politics in the House of Lords.

When he died in 1863, the family title passed to the next surviving brother, Charles French (1790-1868), as the third Lord de Freyne. Unlike his elder brothers, Charles French was happily married and had a large family of seven children, six sons and a daughter, and so it seemed there would be no problem of the family estates, totalling almost 30,000 acres in the west of Ireland, and the family title having male heirs to ensure succession to both. Or so it seemed.

On 13 February 1851, when he was in his 60s and when it still looked unlikely that he would ever inherit a title or have children, Charles French married a local woman, Catherine Maree, daughter of Luke Maree from Fairymount. She has been described as a ‘peasant girl’ who was born around 1830 or 1831. He was more than three times her age: she was 20 and he was almost 61 and the marriage was performed by a local Catholic priest.

Catherine may have been pregnant at the time of the marriage, and Charles and Catherine quickly had three children, one after another:

1, Charles French (1851-1925).
2, John French (1853-1916).
3, William John French (1854-1928).

But by the time William was born on 21 April 1854, it had become obvious that Charles and his children were in line to the family title and estates, the legal validity of the marriage was questioned. She was a Roman Catholic and he was a member of the Church of Ireland, and the surviving legacy of the Penal Laws, even in the 1850s, meant a member of the Church of Ireland could only legitimately marry in the Church of Ireland.

The obscure interpretation of the law was causing scandals in society and eventually legislation was needed to rectify a legal anachronism and injustice when the marriages of Barry Yelverton and the succession to the title of Lord Avonmore were challenged in the courts in 1861-1864.

And so, Charles and Catherine were quietly married a second time in 1854, perhaps in the hope of legitimising their four children, and ensuring succession to the title and estates.

This time the wedding took place on 17 May 1854 in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin, and was performed by the Revd William Maturin. Charles gave his address as the Albert Hotel, which was in Dominick Street, Dublin, and his occupation as ‘late captain’; Catherine gave her address as Anna Villa, North Circular Road, which technically made her a resident of the parish. He was then 63 and she was 23; he describes himself as a bachelor, she as a spinster, although their fourth child had been born within the previous month. She was illiterate and signed the register with an X.

All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman … Charles French and Catherine Maree were married here for a second time in 1854 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Charles and Catherine went on to have four more children, three sons and a daughter:

4, Arthur French (1855-1913).
5, Richard Patrick French (1857-1921).
6, Robert French (1858-1920).
7, Mary Josephine French (1859-1919), who married in Saint Andrew’s Church, Westland Row, Dublin, Valentine Joseph Blake (1842-1912) of the Heath, Queen’s Co (Co Laois); she died at 39 Waterloo Place, Dublin, on 20 February 1919.

Lord de Freyne celebrated his 68th birthday on the day his youngest son was born in 1858. He died on 28 October 1868, and in 1869, all six of his sons arrived as boarders at Downside Abbey, the Benedictine-run Catholic public school in Somerset, near Bath.

They were all to be educated as Catholics, despite the confusion of their parents’ marriages.

But it was still uncertain which son was going to succeed to the family title. The Yelverton case had been heard and appealed, and new legislation on legitimacy had been enacted. The Roll of the House of Lords, which was issued each year, shows blanks against the name of the holder of the de Freyne peerage in 1875 and 1876, indicating that the matter was still undecided, and the estates were administered on behalf of the family by Valentine Dillon, whose daughter later married John French.

Eventually, however, lawyers decided the 1851 marriage was invalid and any children born in that marriage were illegitimate. The first four children continued to use the prefix ‘The Hon,’ indicating they were the legitimate children of a peer. But Arthur French, the first son born after the 1854 marriage, succeed as 4th Baron de Freyne. The former Catherine Maree died on 13 November 1900.

Arthur French was known as a cruel landlord and ruled his estate and his family with a rod of iron. In 1902, when his tenants refused to pay their rent, he took leading members of the Irish Party to court, accusing them of incitement.

The fourth Lord de Freyne had the doubtful pleasure of reading his own obituary in The Times on 11 September 1913. On 23 September 1913, The Times, reported: ‘Lord de Freyne, whose death was wrongly announced last Thursday week, died yesterday morning at his residence, Frenchpark, Co Roscommon, in his 59th year.’

When he died, Frenchpark and the title passed to his eldest son, Captain Arthur Reginald French. In 1902, as a 23-year-old, this Arthur was also at the centre of a society scandal that the London evening newspapers called ‘a romance of the peerage’ when he married an 18-year-old barmaid and single mother, Annabel Angus, in Rothes in Scotland.

He was a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers with mounting mess debts. She was already the mother of a small child, and had a brief marriage to another officer that had ended in a quick divorce.

But they had no children and the future Lord de Freyne soon grew tired of his wife. Less than three years after their marriage, he went to New York and spent his days and nights drinking in the Bowery. When he disappeared, leaving his luggage in a New York hotel, his family and former friends feared that he had been kidnapped or murdered.

After a search that lasted several weeks, he was found at Fort Slocum on Long Island, where he had enlisted as a private in the US army. When he succeeded to the title in 1913, he was an American soldier in the Philippines. He returned to Frenchpark, but without Annabel. When World War I broke out, he returned to the army, and was killed in action at the Battle of Aubers Ridge in Flanders in 1915.

He is among four members of this family who died in World War I and are named in plaques in the Catholic Parish Church in Frenchpark: Edward Fulke French (1886-1919), who fought in the Dardanelles and died a prisoner of war in Mainz; George Philip French (1890-1915), killed in action in Flanders; and Ernest Aloysius French (1894-1917), who died of wounds in Flanders in 1917.

Meanwhile, his uncle John French, the second son who was excluded by law from inheriting the titles and estates, was living in Cobh (Queenstown), Co Cork. John French was a Resident Magistrate or JP for Co Kerry (1892-1898), Co Limerick (1898) and Co Roscommon.

On 26 July 1877, he married Nannie Dillon. They were the parents of 10 children, six of whom survived, but two of those sons died within weeks of each other in World War I, and this is the family commemorated in the south porch in the Church of the Holy Name in Beechwood Avenue.

World War I took a severe toll on this branch of the French family. John French was also a distant cousin of two key players in the 1916 Rising, Charlotte French (1844-1939), better known as Madam Despard, who spent a lot of time at Frenchpark, where her father was born, her brother General John French (1852-1925), who was involved in suppressing the 1916 Rising and became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Earl of Ypres. The three were also distant cousins of Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), the first President of Ireland, who is buried in the churchyard at Frenchpark, where he spent much of his childhood and where his father was the rector.

But the 1916 connections are closer, for the Church in Beechwood Avenue was also the venue for the wedding of the 1916 leader Thomas McDonagh and Muriel Gifford. Padraic Pearse was supposed to be the best man at that wedding, but forget to turn up … and that too is a story for another day.

Updated and corrected: 09.05.2020

The Eucharist or Holy Communion in the Church of Ireland and Anglicanism

The Church of Ireland, as part of the world-wide Anglican church, has a long tradition of Eucharistic theology at the centre of the Church’s life

By Patrick Comerford

The Church of Ireland sees itself, alongside the Roman Catholic Church, as the ancient church of this land, and part of the Anglican Communion, the world’s third largest grouping of Christians.

The historical, foundational documents for Anglican theology are The Book of Common Prayer, the 39 Articles and the Ordinal.

THE EUCHARIST AS A SACRAMENT

In the 39 Articles, Article 19 states clearly that the Church is found where “the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all things …”

Article 23 specifies that only priests ordained by bishops may preside at the Eucharist, while Article 25 describes Baptism and the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper as the two “Sacraments ordained of Christ,” alongside the five other sacraments. Article 28, often seen as the foundational Anglican doctrinal statement on the Eucharist, states: “The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the Love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; … the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.”

However, the interpretation of Article 28 varies throughout Anglicanism. In one interpretation, those who receive sacrament of the Holy Communion in faith, receive the spiritual body and blood of Christ. Others say the real objective presence of Christ is in the Eucharist, although the precise nature of that presence is a mystery of faith. Still others identify with the Eucharistic theology of consubstantiation often associated with Martin Luther.

The classical Anglican understanding of the Eucharist as mystery is found in words from the poet-priest John Donne often ascribed to Elizabeth I:

He was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it

WHAT’S IN A NAME

The first Book of Common Prayer (1549) referred to “the Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, commonly called the Masse.” Many outside observers are surprised that the word Mass survived the Reformation. Although it was excised from the second Book of Common Prayer (1552), and its use is less frequent in Ireland, it continues among Anglicans with a Catholic tradition and in more popular use for special occasions such as “Midnight Mass” at Christmas Eve.

The term “Lord’s Supper” is derived from Saint Paul (see I Corinthians 11: 20). It was preferred by many Reformers, but is also found in pre-Reformation English texts. The use of the word “Communion” for sacramental celebrations comes from the Vulgate text of I Corinthians 10: 16, and was widely used in pre-Reformation English.

In the Church of Ireland today, the terms used in the Book of Common Prayer (2004) include the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Communion, and the Eucharist. Of these three, the Holy Communion is most frequently used to describe the full rite, although the Eucharist is used increasingly.

THE CENTRAL ACT OF THE CHURCH’S WORSHIP

The Book of Common Prayer (2004) says “the Holy Communion is the central act of worship of the Church” and “it is fitting that the Holy Communion be celebrated in every cathedral and in each parish church” on Sundays and on the principal Holy Days, such as Christmas, Easter, the Epiphany, the Presentation, Maundy Thursday, Ascension Day, Trinity Sunday and All Saints’ Day. There is no provision for celebrating the Eucharist on Good Friday.

The Ordinal clearly sets out that priests (who are both male and female) are ordained both to preach the word and to “minister his holy Sacraments” – the sacramental life is central to any understanding of ordained ministry.

Despite the expectations of the rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer, the frequency of celebrations varies according to the traditions of cathedrals and parish churches. For example, the Eucharist is the main Sunday service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and Saint Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, in Saint Bartholomew’s Ballsbridge, All Saints’, Grangegorman and Saint John’s, Sandymount, all in Dublin, and Saint George’s, Belfast, and, during term time, the Chapel of Trinity College Dublin. Christ Church and Saint Anne’s are alone among Irish cathedrals in having daily celebrations of the Eucharist.

However, in many parishes where there is a weekly Sunday Eucharist, this may take place at an early hour (typically 8.30), with half a dozen or a dozen people present. The main Sunday service in parish churches is usually at 10.30 or 11 a.m., and typically alternates in many parishes between the Eucharist and Morning Prayer. Although the Book of Common Prayer says “Members of the Church should partake of the Lord’s Supper regularly,” in some churches the Holy Communion may be celebrated only once a month, and in those places this is usually on the first Sunday of the month. Celebrations of the Eucharist at Easter and Christmas can see many parish churches packed to capacity, and in the past Easter Communion provided a clear definition of membership of the Church of Ireland.

In the past, Easter Communion
provided a clear definition of
membership of the Church of
Ireland

REFORMING THE LITURGY

Before modern liturgical reforms, it was commonplace to find that on Sundays when Holy Communion was celebrated on a Sunday, it followed an abbreviated form of Morning Prayer. The vast majority of parishioners left the church during the final hymn, and only a handful of people remained for short service of Holy Communion. This practice is dying out, mainly because it is no longer facilitated by the liturgical structures in the Book of Common Prayer. Increasingly, all present receive the sacrament, but few parts of the Church of Ireland have come to the stage of liturgical awareness in the Church of England where, thanks to the Parish Communion Movement and later liturgical reforms, the Eucharist is the normal Sunday morning service.

Communion vessels, Christ Church Cathedral (Patrick Comerford)

The Book of Common Prayer provides for two Eucharistic rites. Holy Communion 1 more-or-less follows the format of Holy Communion in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Holy Communion 2 (pp 201-240) draws on the insights of the modern liturgical movement and its format is immediately recognisable to Christians of other traditions. There are provisions for some variations, with three Eucharistic prayers, and a variety of collects, prefaces, post-communion prayers and blessings that set or develop themes according to the liturgical calendar and seasons.

In some cases, Communion hosts
are used, with one large host for the
celebrant. My own preference is for
one, large, tasty bap

The Book of Common Prayer encourages full Scriptural readings at each celebration (normally Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle and Gospel), followed by a sermon and the Nicene Creed. A westward celebration, with the priest standing behind the altar and facing the people, is increasingly normal, the dominical words are used, and the full, four-fold movement described by Dom Gregory Dix (taking, blessing, breaking and giving the bread; taking, blessing and giving the cup) is regarded as one continuous moment of consecration – in the past, the 1662 Book of Common Payer restricted this understanding to the priest’s use of the dominical words.

BREAD AND WINE

The bread used must be “the best and the purest bread.” In some cases, Communion hosts are used, with one large host for the celebrant; my own preference is for one, large, tasty bap; sadly, in all too many parishes, the bread is often cheap sliced pan, pressed down and already cut into small cubes, so that the breaking or fraction is reduced a token gesture. Care must be taken too with the choice of wine, and one bishop delights in using champagne in his cathedrals on Easter Day!

Generally speaking, everyone present comes forward to receive Holy Communion, usually kneeling at the altar rails, although in cathedrals with large congregations communion may be administered in front of the rails, with people coming forward in single file and receiving standing up. The presiding priest administers the bread of Communion from a paten, and may be assisted by one or two colleagues or lay people administering a chalice.

Everyone is expected to have examined their consciences beforehand. In the past, children waited until Confirmation, around the age 12-14, to receive Communion. Children are invited to come forward to the rails to receive a blessing, but I am among the increasing number of priests who offer Communion to children who have been baptised. Christians of other traditions who are baptised and in good standing in their churches are generally welcomed, but their consciences are respected.

Because of this tradition of Eucharistic hospitality, Anglicans find it difficult to understand the practices of other traditions and we often feel excluded. This is particularly difficult, because of family relationships, in the Roman Catholic Church, and it is of little comfort, to point to similar practices in other traditions, including the Orthodox Churches, and in many evangelical traditions such as the Baptists and the Brethren.

COMMUNAL CELEBRATION

In the Church of Ireland, there can be no celebration of the Holy Communion unless at least one communicant is present. In other words, there are no private masses. But participation in the Eucharist is never taken for granted, and there is an air of reverence and stillness as people approach. It is a tradition that finds expression in the well-loved words of the Prayer of Humble Access:

“We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord, whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. Amen.”

(The Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford lectures in Liturgy and Anglicanism in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and is a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

The altar at All Saints’, Grangegorman (Patrick Comerford)

This paper was first published in January/February 2016 in ‘Reality’ Volume 81, No 1, pp 14-17 (Dublin: Redemptorist Communications), editor: Brendan McConvery CSsR.

‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason’

‘Other echoes / Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … in the garden at the Hedgehog in Lichfield last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday, 7 June 2015,

The First Sunday after Trinity

All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin,

11.30 a.m., The Parish Eucharist.

Readings: I Samuel 8: 4-11, [12-15], 16-20, [11: 14-15]; Psalm 138; II Corinthians 4: 13 to 5: 1; Mark 3: 20-35.

May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of TS Eliot on 4 January 1965. Eliot is, perhaps, the greatest poet in the English language in the 20th century, and he is one of the greatest Anglican literary figures.

As well as being a great poet, he was also a playwright, and his plays include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party.

Murder in the Cathedral was first staged in the Chapter House in Canterbury Cathedral 80 years ago on 15 June 1935. This verse drama is based on the events leading to the murder in Canterbury Cathedral of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, on 29 December 1170.

The play was written at the prompting of the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, a friend of the martyred German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and later one of the key critics of the excesses of violence unleashed in World War II.

The dramatisation in this play of opposition to authority was prophetic at the time, for it was written as fascism was on the rise in Central Europe and Bishop Bell had chosen wisely when he suggested Eliot should write this play.

The play is set in the days leading up to the martyrdom of Thomas Becket at the behest of King Henry II, and the principal focus is on Becket’s internal struggles.

As he reflects on the inevitable martyrdom he faces, his tempters arrive, like characters in a Greek drama, or like Job’s comforters, and question the archbishop about his plight, echoing in many ways Christ’s temptations in the wilderness when he has been fasting for 40 Days.

The first tempter offers Becket the prospect of physical safety:

The easy man lives to eat the best dinners.
Take a friend’s advice. Leave well alone,
Or your goose may be cooked and eaten to the bone.

The second tempter offers him power, riches and fame in serving the king so that he can disarm the powerful and help the poor:

To set down the great, protect the poor,
Beneath the throne of God can man do more?

Then the third tempter suggests the archbishop should form an alliance with the barons and seize a chance to resist the king:

For us, Church favour would be an advantage,
Blessing of Pope powerful protection
In the fight for liberty. You, my Lord,
In being with us, would fight a good stroke
At once, for England and for Rome.

Finally, the fourth tempter urges Thomas to look to the glory of martyrdom:

You hold the keys of heaven and hell.
Power to bind and loose: bind, Thomas, bind,
King and bishop under your heel.

Becket responds to all his tempters and specifically addresses the immoral suggestions of the fourth tempter at the end of the first act:

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Saint Mark’s Gospel is very sparse in its account of the story of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness – just two verses (see Mark 1: 12-13) compared to fuller 11 or 13 verse accounts given by Saint Matthew (see Matthew 4: 1-11) and Saint Luke (see Luke 4: 1-13).

In those fuller temptation narratives, Christ is tempted to do the right things for the wrong reason.

What would be wrong with Christ turning stones into bread (see Matthew 4: 3; Luke 4: 3-4) if that is going to feed the hungry? With showing his miraculous powers (see Matthew 4: 3; Luke 4: 9), if this is going to point to the majesty of God (see Matthew 4: 4; Luke 4: 10-11)? With taking command of the kingdoms of this world (see Matthew 4: 9; Luke 4: 5-7), if this provides the opportunity to usher in justice, mercy and peace?

Let us not deceive ourselves, these are real temptations. Christ is truly human and truly divine, and for those who are morally driven there is always a real temptation to do the right thing but to do it for the wrong reason.

‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … summer returns to Cross in Hand Lane, Lichfield, last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

This theme of temptation and how to respond runs through this morning’s Scripture readings.

In the Old Testament reading (I Samuel 8: 4-11, [12-15], 16-20, [11: 14-15]), the elders of Israel want a king, and go to Samuel, claiming their motivation is to be “like other nations” (I Samuel 8: 5). But the real reason was a power grab, motivated by a loss of faith in the power of God. Israel is warned that a king would exploit the people and enslave them, but they refused to heed these warnings.

We all know Ireland benefitted in recent years from wanting to be a modern nation, like your neighbours. But that ambition turned to greed, and we were surprise when greed turned to economic collapse. We found we had given in to the temptation to do what appeared to be the right thing for the wrong reason.

Too often when I am offered the opportunity to do the right thing, to make a difference in this society, in this world, I ask: “What’s in this for me?”

When I am asked to speak up for those who are marginalised or oppressed, this should be good enough reason in itself. But then I wonder how others are going to react – react not to the marginalised or oppressed, but to me.

How often do we use external sources to hide our own internalised prejudices?

How often have I seen what is the right thing to do, but have found an excuse that I pretend is not of my own making?

I hear people claim they are not racist, but speaking about migrants, immigrants and asylum seekers in language that would shock them if it was used about their own family members in England, America or Australia.

The victims of war in Syria or boat people in the Mediterranean are objects for our pity on the television news night after night. But why are they not being settled with compassion, in proportionate numbers in Ireland?

How often do I think of doing the right thing only if it is going to please my family members or please my neighbours?

How often do I use the Bible to justify not extending civil rights to others? Democracy came to all of us at a great price paid by past generations, but how often we try to hold on to those rights as if they were personal, earned wealth.

How often we use obscure Bible texts to prop up our political, racist, social and economic prejudices, forgetting that any text in the Bible, however clear or obscure it may be, depends, in Christ’s own words, on the two greatest commandments, to love God and to love one another.

Christ is challenged in this morning’s Gospel reading in two fundamental ways, about his calling those on the margins to come inside and be part of the Kingdom of God.

Christ is challenged about whether his work is the work of God or the work of the Devil (Mark 3: 22). And he is challenged to think about what his family thinks about what he doing (Mark 3: 32).

It would have been so easy for any one of us to give in under these twin pressures. To give up because of what people think of us, or how our family members might be upset when we do the right thing and there is nothing in it for them or for us – nothing at all except sneers and jeers and isolation.

We can give in so easily … we can convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing when we are doing it for the wrong reason. And when we allow ourselves to be silenced or immobilised, those we should have spoken up for lose a voice, and we lose our own voices, and our own integrity.

A wrong decision taken once, thinking it is doing the right thing, but for the wrong reason, is not just about an action in the present moment. It forms habits and it shapes who we are, within time and eternity.

The Revd Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a prominent German Lutheran pastor and an outspoken opponent of Hitler, spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He once said:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

Eighty years ago, TS Eliot took some of the material that his producer Martin Browne asked him to remove from Murder in the Cathedral and he transformed it into his poem Burnt Norton (1935), the first of his Four Quartets, four poems concerned with the conflict between individual mortality and the endless span of human existence.

In Burnt Norton, TS Eliot tells us that the past and the future are always contained in the present. Past, present, and future cannot be separated with any precision:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

What we do today or refuse to do today, even if we think it is the right thing to do but we do it for the wrong reasons, reflects how we have formed ourselves habitually in the past, is an image of our inner being in the present, and has consequences for the future we wish to shape.

I pray that I, we, and our Church recover our voices and speak up for the oppressed and the marginalised, not because it is fashionable or politically correct today, but because it is the right thing to do today and for the future. Because all our actions must depend on those two great commandments – to love God and to love one another. And because, as Christ reminds us this morning, “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3: 35).

And so may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … walking through the fields beside Cross in Hand Lane, near Lichfield, last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Collect:

God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you:
Mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you, grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you, both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Eternal Father,
we thank you for nourishing us
with these heavenly gifts.
May our communion strengthen us in faith,
build us up in hope,
and make us grow in love;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached on Sunday 7 June 2015 at the Parish Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin.

White roses and rampant lions … a link with Pugin in encaustic tiles

Lines of lions ... a row of encaustic tiles in the south aisle, Christ Cathedral, Dublin, each with an image of rampant lion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Holy Week has been a busy culmination to Lent this year. I have been in Christ Church Cathedral regularly though the week, taking part in the Palm Sunday Eucharist [29 March 2015], the Chrism Eucharist on Maundy Thursday [2 April 2015], and last night’s Easter Eve Eucharist, when I assisted at the administration of the Holy Communion.

I also presided at the Maundy Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, and led the ‘Seven Last Words’ service there on Good Friday [3 April 2015]. On one day this past week, I was at four services in three different places. I am back in Christ Church Cathedral this morning [5 April 2015] for the Easter Eucharist.

White cinquefoils in the sanctuary (above) and the south ambulatory (below), in Christ Church Cathedral … are they a play on the White Rose of the House of York? (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Twice during the past week, I noticed two rows of tiles, almost hidden in the north and south sides of the sanctuary, each with five white cinquefoils or roses. The only other place this design or theme appears is one part of the south ambulatory.

Prompted by the recent funeral of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral 10 days ago [26 March 2015], I wondered whether these Victorian tiles are a humorous play on a Yorkist theme associated with the cathedral: the 10-year-old Yorkist pretender Lambert Simnel was crowned in Christ Church Cathedral as King Edward VI on 24 May 1487.

The story of that coronation is told by Dr John Ashdown-Hill in The Dublin King, which was launched in Christ Church Cathedral about two months ago [12 February 2015]. He was one of the team that discovered Richard III’s body in a car park in Leicester three years ago [August 2012], and in this new book he explores the story Lambert Simnel.

However, he refuses to use the name Lambert Simnel for the Dublin King and believes there is convincing evidence that he was the legitimate Yorkist heir to the throne of Richard III. He suggests that he was neither Lambert Simnel nor one of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ but perhaps Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick and son of George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Richard III.

It would be interesting to explore the story behind those ‘York Rose’ tiles in the sanctuary and the south ambulatory, but there are no references to them in Joanna Wren’s delightful little book, Floor Tiles, a guide to the medieval and 19th century floor tiles of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Because of their almost-hidden location, these 19th century ‘York Rose’ tiles receive little attention. Instead, the tiles that catch the imaginations of most visitors are those with the circular panels decorated with the paired pilgrim foxes, representing the mediaeval friars of the cathedral, and the geometric and floral designs.

Lions in the sanctuary ... encaustic tiles by Craven Dunnill on the south side of the High Altar in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The majority of the floor tiles are 19th century copies of mediaeval floor tiles found during restoration of Christ Church by George Edmund Street in the 1870s. They were made by Craven Dunnill and Co of Shropshire, who also worked on commissions for Chester Cathedral and Bangor Cathedral in Wales.

The manufacture and use of encaustic tiles like these was an integral part of a revival of Gothic architecture and art, particularly where the design of a cathedral or church was inspired or influenced by AWN Pugin (1812-1852).

Joanna Wren discusses many of the patterns and designs in the tiles made by Craven Dunnill, and how most of the Victorian tiles are copies of mediaeval ones, some of them are original designs.

She points out that both the lion and fleur-de-lis designs were “probably taken from heraldry. They were used on the tiles simply as decoration, however, without any special meaning.”

However, it seems to me that the lions rampant, which can be seen on tiles throughout the cathedral, particularly on the south side of the high altar, are not based on designs found in the cathedral’s mediaeval tiles during Street’s restoration, but on a design that was introduced or reintroduced by Pugin in the early 19th century.

Lions in formation ... lions rampant can be found on tiles throughout Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Pugin made drawings for tiles during his many journeys on the night train from London to Staffordshire while he was engaged in restoring and rebuilding Alton Towers. The lion rampant, rather than the talbot, was the primary heraldic symbol of the Talbot family, Earls of Shrewsbury and proprietors of Alton Towers.

The tiles Pugin designed were manufactured by Minton & Co of Stoke-on-Trent in north Staffordshire ca 1842-1844. In the 1840s, Pugin developed a creative partnership with Herbert Minton (1793-1858), a pottery manufacturer in Stoke-on-Trent.

The early products by Thomas Minton (1765-1836) were standard domestic tableware in blue transfer printed or painted earthenware, including the Willow pattern. His son Herbert developed the process of making encaustic tiles, and together Minton and Pugin went beyond a mere revival of mediaeval patterns to develop finely-finished multi-coloured tiles with intricate designs and with a higher degree of accuracy than anything produced in the Middle Ages.

The Alton Towers tiles were made for Pugin by Minton in Staffordshire 30 years – a whole generation – before Craven and Dunnill made the Christ Church tiles for Street (Photograph: Victoria and Albert Museum)

An interesting example of these Pugin-designed, Minton-manufactured tiles with a symbol of a lion rampant is seen in a red earthenware tile with inlaid decoration that is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The Alton Towers tiles were made for Pugin by Minton in Staffordshire 30 years – a whole generation – before Craven Dunnill made the Christ Church tiles for Street.

Pugin’s working relationship with Herbert Minton resulted in the designing and making of some the best church tiles of the Victorian era. He was using Minton tiles as early as 1840 for the Hardman’s Hospital Chapel in Birmingham. By 1844, Minton was making more colourful encaustics probably at Pugin’s instigation.

The Talbot family’s rampant lions on the doors of Pugin’s Saint Giles’s Church in Cheadle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

One of Pugin’s greatest achievements in the design and use of colourful church tiles can be found at Saint Giles in Cheadle, built for Lord Shrewsbury and opened in 1846. Michael Fisher, in his book on Saint Giles’, describes it as “Perfect Cheadle.”

The polychromatic effects of the encaustic floor tiles in Cheadle blend perfectly with the colourful wall and ceiling decorations and the stained glass windows.

Minton went on to supply tiles to other architects working in the Gothic Revival style, and so encaustic tiles are often known as Pugin tiles, irrespective of who their designer is.

Pugin’s use of encaustic tiles was followed by the other leading architects of the Gothic revival, including: Sir George Gilbert Scott, William Butterfield (Westminster Abbey, All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street and Keble College, Oxford), George Edmund Street (Christ Church Cathedral), William Burges (Saint Finn Barre’s Cathedral, Cork) and John Pollard Seddon (Llandaff Cathedral).

The fine Minton tiles in the choir in Lichfield Cathedral were inspired by the medieval ones found in the choir foundations and still seen in the Cathedral Library.

Today, more than half the churches in Britain are paved at least in part with 19th century decorative encaustic tiles and they are often the most notable features in a church.

Dancing lions ... tiles in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Many visitors to Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, ask whether the rampant lion is a symbol of the English royal family; few realise that was a heraldic symbol of the Talbot family, and that through Pugin’s influence it became a popular and unquestioned heraldic theme in the encaustic tiles made for many Gothic revival churches throughout these islands from the mid-19th century on.

The Talbot arms displayed on Ye Olde Talbot in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Seven Last Words (7): ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’

‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’ … candles light up the chapter and choir stalls in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

7, Luke 23: 46

Patrick Comerford

Reading: Luke 23: 44-49.

The words: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Reflection: (7) Reunion

“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

According to the Synoptic Gospels, Christ cried out aloud twice on the cross (see Matthew 27: 46, 50; Mark 15: 34, 37).

However, Saint Luke alone tells us what Christ said when he cried out when he cried that second time: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (see Luke 23: 46), which is our seventh and last reflection this afternoon.

This saying, which is an announcement and not a request, is traditionally called “The Word of Reunion,” for Christ has accepted the will of God the Father in Heaven.

This is the seventh last word. It is followed by silence – the silence of the grave, the silence of Christ lying in the tomb, the silence of the disciples who have lost their sense of direction, their focus, their understanding, their control – and our silence before the resurrection.

So often I want to be in control. I want to control the agenda, I want to control conversations, I want to control discussions. And I particularly want to control the words I use, the words others are going to hear me say.

And so I am humbled at times when I listen to Leonard Cohen’s song, If it be your will.

I have been at each of Leonard Cohen’s concerts in Ireland over the last few years. And at many of his concerts, Leonard Cohen ends singing this poem, which for me is about submission to God’s will, accepting God’s will, leaving God in control of my spirit:

‘If it be your will’ … Leonard Cohen on stage at Lissadell House, Co Sligo, in 2010 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

Leonard Cohen sings of his nearly complete subjection to the divine will.

If he is told to be silent, he will be silent; if he is told to sing, he will sing.

If he is allowed to express his true voice (“if a voice be true”), he will sing in praise of God from the “the broken hill” ... from Calvary?

The mercy of God, the compassion of God, the love of God, redeems the burning hearts in hell ... if it is God’s will.

Leonard Cohen’s great hope in this will leads to prayer, to the one who can “make us well” if we devote ourselves to God, pray to God, sing to God.

But he still prays to God to act on behalf of the suffering.

Cajoling God in song and poetry, Cohen says God has the power to “end this night” of the darkness of the human condition, in which people are dressed in only dirty “rags of light” that are fragmented, that are not fully whole and illuminated.

In this song, I imagine Christ on the cross as he speaks to God the Father as his agony comes to its close:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before.

The broken hill is Golgotha where he has been crucified, the rugged and rocky Mount of Calvary.

“Let the rivers fill” may refer to the water of his thirst, the water of his sweat, the water that streams from his side, the waters of baptism, the Living Water that will never leave us to thirst.

If it be your will
To make us well
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
All your children here

In our journey today, we have been concerned, not just with the last words of Christ on the cross, but also with the meaning of his life for our lives, the meaning of every life for our lives.

As Timothy Radcliffe says: “We must wait for the resurrection to break the silence of the tomb.” We must speak up when it is necessary, and to have the courage to speak is “ultimately founded upon the courage to listen.” But at the grave, at times of desolation, at times when there is no answer, we may also be called to be silent.

And so let us listen to Leonard Cohen sing that poem:

[sound track]


‘If It Be Your Will’ … Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters, Live in London

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
in your last words from the cross
you commended your spirit to the Father.
Help us to end our days
in the secure knowledge of your love,
that whether dying or living,
we may be safe in his eternal arms,
for your mercy’s sake. Amen.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin. This is the seventh of seven reflections on “the Seven Last Words” on Good Friday, 3 April 2015, in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin, where the Vicar is Archdeacon David Pierpoint.

Seven Last Words (6): ‘It is finished’

‘It is finished’ … the Cross on a sandbank between the sea and the church in Laytown, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

6, John 19: 30

Patrick Comerford

Reading: John 19: 30-37.

The words: “It is finished.”

Reflection: (6) Triumph

‘It is finished’

This statement is traditionally called “The Word of Triumph,” and it is interpreted as the announcement of the end of the earthly life of Jesus, in anticipation of the Resurrection.

For many years, I led a service of reflection on Holy Saturday in Whitechurch Parish, contemplating the Tomb of Christ.

So often we move too quickly from the afternoon of Good Friday to the morning of Easter Day, without thinking of what has been accomplished.

When I first suggested such a service, the Rector of Whitechurch, Canon Horace McKinley, pointed out that there is no provision in The Book of Common Prayer for anything on Holy Saturday, until the Easter Eve Eucharist, which is the beginning of Easter itself.

On Holy Saturday, we use our churches for children’s clubs, or to decorate the church with eggs and little fluffy yellow chickens.

But do we allow Christ’s Crucifixion to come to its proper end – in the tomb?

Do we contemplate what has been finished, what has been accomplished?

Each year, in Whitechurch Parish, at that Holy Saturday service, we have reflected on great works of music, art and poetry that allow us to wait by the tomb.

One year, I chose for that reflection Mozart’s Requiem. This composition, written at the end of Mozart’s life when he was pressed with other work and in poor health, contains some of his most sublime music. Yet he did not complete it. He died leaving instructions to his friend to finish it off.

On the Cross, now that his life is coming to a close, Christ knows that all has been completed. “It is finished!” he cries out before he dies.

What is finished? What has been completed?

After his conversation with Samaritan woman at the Well of Sychar, Christ tells the Disciples: “My food is to do the will of him who has sent me and to complete his work” (John 4: 34). Later, after his great final discourse at the Last Supper, Christ lifts his eyes up to heaven and prays to his Father: “… this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do” (John 17: 4).

What was this work which the Father gave his Son to do?

In the New Testament, seven principal titles are given to Christ:

● 1, Son of Man;
● 2, The Lamb of God;
● 3, The New Adam;
● 4, The Son of God;
● 5, Lord;
● 6, Prophet;
● 7, Messiah.

But when it comes to his own self-description, Christ constantly talks about himself in terms of his relationship with us. There are seven “I AM” sayings in Saint John’s Gospel, seven ways in which he talks about who he is, gives himself a self-description, but always in terms of relationship:

He says he is

● 1, Bread: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall will never be hungry” (John 6: 35).
● 2, The Light: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8: 12).
● 3, The Gate: “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture” (John 10: 9).
● 4, The Good Shepherd: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10: 11).
● 5, The Resurrection and the Life: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (John 11: 25).
● 6, The Way, the Truth, and the Life: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14: 6).
● 7, The True Vine: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower” (John 15: 1).

It is no wonder that at his death, Christ cries out: “It is finished!” His death makes those relationships complete, brings his work to completion.

His death shows not just that these were poetic or literary devices on the part of Christ; he totally identifies with us, in life, in death, and in the grave. Death shows us how completely his identification with us is.

It is finished. Not that it is over, but is complete. His relationship with us has not come to end. It has come to its God-planned fulfilment.

‘It is finished’ … the East Window in Kenure Parish Church, Rush (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

There is a popular story from the Mexico Olympics and how at 7 p.m. on 20 October 1968, a few thousand spectators were left in the Olympic Stadium. It was cool and dark. The last of the marathon runners, each exhausted, were being carried off to first-aid stations. More than an hour earlier, Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia – looking as fresh as when he started the race – crossed the finish line, the winner of the 26-mile, 385-yard event.

As the remaining spectators prepared to leave, those sitting near the marathon gates suddenly heard the sound of sirens and police whistles. All eyes turned to the gate. A lone figure wearing number 36 and the colours of Tanzania entered the stadium.

This was John Stephen Akhwari, the last man to finish the marathon. He had fallen during the race and injured his knee and ankle. Now, with his leg bloodied and bandaged, he grimaced with each step as he hobbled around the 400-meter track.

The spectators rose in applause.

After crossing the finish line, Akhwari slowly walked off the field. Later, a reporter asked him the question on everyone’s mind: “Why did you continue the race after you were so badly injured?”

He replied: “My country did not send me 7,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 7,000 miles to finish it.”

There is a prayer ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh that says: “O Lord God, when you give your servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same to the end, until it be thoroughly finished, which yields the true glory; through him who for the finishing of your work, laid down his life, our redeemer, Jesus Christ.”

The Incarnation makes no sense without the crucifixion. In Christ God fully identifies with the plight of suffering humanity. Birth is not enough, there must be death too.

“It is finished” is not a death gurgle.

“It is finished” is not “I am done for.”

“It is finished” is the last words of Christ on the cross.

“It is finished” is a cry of victory.

“It is finished” is the triumphant cry that what Christ has come to do has been done.

All is accomplished, completed, fulfilled.

Archbishop Rowan Williams reminds us of Pascal’s stark remark that “Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world.”

Of course, we live in the time between the times – the kingdom is begun in Christ but will not be seen in its perfection until the end of the world.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury observes that Pascal’s comment on Christ’s continuing agony is an exhortation to us not to become nostalgic for a supposedly less compromised past or to take refuge in some imagined purified future, but to dwell in the tension-filled time between times, to remain awake to our inability “to stay in the almost unbearable present moment where Jesus is.”

Christ in Majesty ... John Piper’s window in the Chapel of the Hospital of Saint John Without the Barrs, Lichfield ... the Cross illustrates the Triumph of God

Saint John’s Gospel makes explicit what all the Gospels assume – the cross is not a defeat but the victory of God.

The Crucifixion is kingdom come. This is the great long-awaited apocalyptic moment. Here the powers of this world are forever subverted. Time is now redeemed through the raising up of Christ on his cross. A new age has begun. The kingdom is here a-born, a new regime is inaugurated, creating a new way of life for those who worship and follow Christ.

God’s work, the work of the Trinity, is consummated in Christ’s great declaration from the cross: “It is finished.”

His life, his death, his resurrection, as Irenaeus insists, recapitulates creation, recapitulates God’s covenant with his people, unites creation and redemption in the Incarnation. The new creation is complete.

As Richard Neuhaus puts it in his reflections on the seven last words in his Death on a Friday Afternoon: “‘It is finished.’ But it is not over.” God remains at work making us, his creatures, divine.

Now it is possible for us to live at peace, to be God’s agents of reconciliation, in a violent world. We are able so to live not because we have answers to all the world’s troubles, but because God has given us a way to live without answers.

Our sins have been consumed, making possible lives that glow with the beauty of God's Spirit. What wonderful news: “‘It is finished.’ But it is not over.” It is not over because God made us, the Church, the “not over.”

We are made witnesses so the world – a world that has no time for a crucified God – may know we have all the time of God's kingdom to live in peace with one another.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
you were obedient to the very end,
and completed on the cross
the plan of our salvation.
Help us to rejoice in the victory
of your finished work,
and to live out your will and purpose
to the end of our days,
for your mercy’s sake. Amen.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin. This is the sixth of seven reflections on “the Seven Last Words” on Good Friday, 3 April 2015, in All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, Dublin, where the Vicar is Archdeacon David Pierpoint.