Closing an old book and opening a new one to mark the end of Candlemas

Opening a new preacher’s book and closing an old one in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation, brought an end to the 40-day season of Christmas and Epiphany-tide today. From tonight, we move into Ordinary Time, but just for two weeks, as Lent begins in a fortnight’s time on Ash Wednesday, 17 February.

The candles on the Advent Wreath in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, were lit for the last time this morning for the celebration of the Candlemas Eucharist.

Afterwards, two of us removed the Advent Wreath and candles, the Christmas Crib, the flower arrangements, and the holly, the ivy and the poinsettias decorating the pulpit and the windows, and packed away the crib for the next ten months – although the community Christmas Crib outside the church gates was still in place in Church Street this afternoon, complete with the visiting Magi.

Despite the lockdown, and the uncertainty about when the churches may open once again – whether this may be during Lent or in time for Easter celebrations – I still must plan to mark Holy Week and Easter.

Already, those plans include a series of five online Lenten studies led by members of the cathedral chapters of Limerick and Killaloe. To paraphrase or recycle a now-jaded saying, church buildings may be closed for Lent, but the Church is not.

One of the last things to do this morning was to open a new preachers’ book in the Vestry in Askeaton. I had made the last entry on Sunday in an old and fading book that is beginning to fall apart.

It was good to start a new preachers’ book with the first entry by marking the end of the season of Christmas and Epiphany-tide today. But it was also curious to look back on the entries in the book I had been using since I arrived in Askeaton four years ago.

The first entries in that book began in 1958, with entries by Canon Frederick Alexander Howard White (1885-1965), who had been the Rector of Askeaton, Shanagolden and Loughill for 30 years, since 1928, and stayed on in the parish for another five years, until 1963, when he retired at the age of 78. He died two years later, in 1965, shortly before his 80th birthday.

It was interesting to look at his entries in the book this morning. There were Sunday services every week, alternating between Morning Prayer and Matins with Holy Communion. Attendances were only marginally higher than they have been in pre-pandemic days, but it is surprising how few people remained behind for Holy Communion after what we knew well into the 1970s or later as ‘Mangled Matins.’

In the first few weeks of that old book, holiday cover seems to have been provided by the Revd (later Canon) Gerald Samuel Magahy (1923-2008), then the Headmaster of Villiers School and Diocesan Curate in Limerick. He later became Chaplain and Headmaster of the King’s Hospital, overseeing the school’s move from Blackhall Place in inner-city Dublin to Palemrstown in 1971. He was also successively Treasurer, Chancellor and Precentor of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Canon White was also one that interesting generation of Church of Ireland clergy who emerged from Rathmines School, a cradle for many for many priests, missionaries and bishops who were at the cutting edge of thinking in the post-disestablishment Church of Ireland, and run by the Revd Charles William Benson (1836-1919) for 40 years from 1859 to 1899.

He was also one of my predecessors as the Precentor of Limerick Cathedral, holding office 12 years from 1951 to 1963. Some people in the parish still remember him.

The last lighting of the candles on the Advent Wreath, celebrating Candlemas in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Former Bluecoat School in a hidden corner of Limerick was founded 300 years ago

The former Bluecoat School in Limerick, beside Saint Mary’s School, was founded 300 year ago in 1717 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

In a hidden corner of Limerick, tucked into the space created between the chancel and the north transept, the former Bluecoat school can be seen boxed in the walls of the cathedral on two sides, am abutting flat roofed house on a third side, and hidden behind a high wall on the fourth side.

Limerick’s former Charity Blue School or Bluecoat School was founded 300 years ago in 1717. It closed after a scathing report in the mid-19th century, but the building remains an interesting part of the story of education and charities in Limerick.

A Bluecoat school is a type of charity school, the first of which was founded in the 16th century. Most of these schools have closed, but some remain open as schools, albeit on different sites, and some of the original buildings have been adapted for other purposes.

They were known as ‘bluecoat schools’ because of the distinctive blue uniform originally worn by the pupils. The colour blue was traditionally the colour of charity, and was a common colour for clothing at the time. The uniform included a blue frock coat, and yellow stockings with white bands.

Christ’s Hospital in London was the first Bluecoat school. It was founded by King Edward VI in Newgate Street, London, in 1552 as a foundling hospital to care for and educate poor children.

From the mid-16th to the late 18th century, over 60 similar schools were established throughout England and Ireland. Although they were not connected with Christ’s Hospital, they were also known as bluecoat schools because their pupils too wore the characteristic blue uniform. The original Christ’s Hospital, whose pupils included Samuel Coleridge and Charles Lamb, retained its name when it moved moved out of London to Horsham in West Sussex in 1902 and developed into an independent school.

In Ireland, there were Bluecoat schools in Cork, Derry, Dublin, Limerick and two in Waterford – one for boys and one girl – later incorporated as Bishop Foy’s School, which merged with Newtown School 50 years ago in 1967. The Bluecoat School in Dublin was founded by a charter from King Charles II in 1669. It was originally located in Blackhall Place, and is better known today as the King’s Hospital, now located in Palmerstown.

The Bluecoat School in Limerick was founded 300 years ago in 1717. The former school building is tucked against the side of Saint Mary’s Cathedral in the corner formed by the Chancel at the East End and the North Transept. Viewed from the outside, it is partly hidden behind a high wall and a neighbouring flat-roofed house on the corner of Nicholas Street and Saint Augustine Place.

The Charity Blue School or Bluecoat School in Limerick was founded in 1717 under the terms of the will of Canon John Moore, who had died the previous year, leaving a house known as the White Hart in Smithfield for the use of a charity school in Limerick.

John Moore was chaplain to the Irish House of Commons, Prebendary of Mulhuddart in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Rector of Kilsaran, Co Louth, and Vicar of Saint Catherine’s, then a fashionable parish in Dublin city centre.

His father, Henry Moore, 3rd Earl of Drogheda, assumed the additional surname of Hamilton when he succeeded to the estates of his brother-in-law, Henry Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Clanbrassil. In a feat of egotism, Henry built and named Henry Street, Moore Street, Earl Street, Of (or Off) Lane (now Henry Place), and Drogheda Street (now part of O’Connell Street) in Dublin.

Canon Moore was also a son-in-law of Sir Charles Porter, twice Lord Chancellor of Ireland (1686-1687 and 1690-1696) and one of the signatories of the Treaty of Limerick in 1691. When Moore died on 1 June 1716, he was buried at Saint Peter’s Church, Drogheda, and his bequest was used the following year for the foundation of the Blue Coat or Blue School in Limerick.

The foundation was boosted in 1721, when an order in council granted £20 a year for a charity school. Three years later, in 1724, Mrs Alice Craven, the widow of an alderman of Limerick, gave some houses in Limerick, earning a rent of £40 a year, to the Bishop, Dean, Mayor, Recorder and their successors in trust for the Blue School. She later confirmed this grant in her will dated 17 January 1729.

In her will, Alice Craven also left a large house, sometimes described as ‘a castle near West Watergate,’ to house 12 poor widows who would receive 40 shillings a year. This house later fell into ruins and was pulled down. She also left £60 a year to the poor of the city parishes in Limerick and jailed debtors.

Originally, the school educated 15 poor boys from the neighbourhood, who wore a blue and yellow uniform and who were prepared for apprenticeship to trade in the city.

This charity school was supported by donations from the church, the congregation and the corporation. But a generation after its foundation, the school had fallen into decay by 1748.

The school was revived in the early 1770s by the trustees of the charity, William Gore, Bishop of Limerick, Maurice Crosbie, Dean of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Christopher Carr, Mayor of Limerick, and Henry Bindon, the Recorder.

The house Alice Craven left to the new school stood on the corner of Saint Nicholas Street and Bow Lane (now Saint Augustine Place). A new school was built in 1771-1772 in the scholastic Gothic style while the north side of Saint Mary’s Cathedral was being rebuilt.

Building work on the new school began in August 1771, and was completed six months later. In opening a part of the cathedral wall to lay the roof of the Blue School, three cannon balls were found, from 18 to 24 lb, were found embedded in the wall.

This schoolhouse is an important structure architecturally as an early example of the scholastic Gothic style. It is a plain gabled building with pointed arch windows.

A plaque on the front facing Nicholas Street, behind the high wall, refers to the school’s restoration in 1772: ‘The Charity Blue School revived AD 1772. By order of the trustees. Right Rev Doctor William Gore, lord bishop. Hon and Revd Mau. Crosbie, dean. Chris. CarrChris, esq; Mayor. Henry Bindon, esq; Recorder. The above ball is one of a number fired from Park by king William’s army; and lodged in part of the wall of St Mary’s Church, to which this school house is adjoined.’

By the 1780s, 20 boys were being taught to read, write, keep accounts and sing in the cathedral, and they were clothed each year in the school uniform of blue and yellow that gave the school its name.

However, by the mid-19th century, the school was in a severe decline. In 1854, the school had 12 pupils, but this had dropped to four and then to three when there was inspection in 1858. The inspectors found the school was unsatisfactory and was only catering for cathedral choirboys who had lost their place in the choir when their voices changes.

An inquiry by the Commissioners for Endowed Schools in 1858 found the school had no master. Joseph Mullin had been the master and the principal tenor in the cathedral choir, but he had resigned just before the inquiry, which observed the absence of any proper inspection, examination and catechising.

The inquiry heard evidence from Henry O’Shea, Mayor of Limerick, who was disbarred from being a trustee because he was Roman Catholic. He believed the school uniform was a myth by then, and while boys had been seen around Limerick in the blue-coat uniform in the past, it was no longer seen.

The Bishop of Limerick, Henry Griffin, told the inquiry he had left the management of the choir and the school connected with it altogether to the dean. The Dean of Limerick, the Very Revd Anthony Latouche Kirwan, a trustee of the school, said that usually there were about five boys in the school. Fee-paying pupils had been admitted in the past, and numbered about nine boys, but he said the school got rid of as a nuisance.

Further evidence showed the free school and the choir school had been amalgamated. By 1855, there were no free boys or blue boys in the school, and by 1858 the school had only four pupils, who were named as Thomas Leonard, Thomas M’Auley, Edward Ivimy and Stephen Goggin.

Dean Kirwan claimed the original intention of the school was to teach boys to sing in the choir. This excused giving preference to singing boys, and excluding fee-paying pupils, even though this meant the master was paid a low salary.

Questions were raised about the number of free pupils returned, the financial embarrassments that led to the school uniform being discontinued, and the unsatisfactory accounts of the school. The houses left for the blue school were in ruins and the property and management of the school had been neglected.

The inquiry also heard evidence from John Watson O’Mahony secretary, collector of rates, on the state of funds from the original endowment and the dilapidated condition of the properties the school had been endowed with. Ralph Nash, a bookkeeper, also gave evidence on the condition of the houses, and John Boyse, solicitor to the Bluecoat School, Limerick, gave details of Mrs Alicia Craven’s original endowment and will.

The inquiry concluded that that the education provided for boys in the school was defective and unsatisfactory. It closed soon after, and later in the 19th century the school building was used for the cathedral Sunday school.

The plaque on the façade facing Nicholas Street recalls the rebuilding of the school in 1772 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

A conciliatory Irish bishop who was born in Lichfield

Edward Wettenhall ((1636–1713), Bishop of Cork and later Bishop of Kilmore, was born in Lichfield

Patrick Comerford

In the past, I have written about Richard FitzRalph, the former Dean of Lichfield who became Archbishop of Armagh, and about the curious position of the Archbishops of Dublin who for centuries were Deans of Penkridge in Staffordshire and who refused to accept or acknowledge the episcopal rights of the Bishops of Lichfield within their ‘peculiar’ or parish.

But the connections between the Church of Ireland and Lichfield were often understated but positive contributions.

I am reminded during my stay in Lichfield this week of Edward Wetenhall (1636–1713), a bishop of the Church of Ireland at the turn of the 17th and 18th century, who was born in Lichfield. He is celebrated by 19th century historians of Lichfield, including Thomas Lomax and Thomas Harwood, as one of the ‘eminent characters’ of Lichfield, and in Ireland he sought to play a conciliatory role at a difficult and tumultuous time in the life of the Church.

The bishop – whose surname is also spelled Wettenhall, Whetenhall, Whitnall, Withnoll, and Wythnall – was born in Lichfield on 7 October 1636, but we know little about his family background or circumstances. He was sent to school in Westminster School, where he was taught by Richard Busby, before going on to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a foundation scholar.

After graduating BA (1659-1660) in Cambridge, he moved to Oxford, where he became the chaplain at Lincoln College.

He was a priest in parishes in Combe Long, Oxfordshire, and at Saint Stephen’s, near St Albans, Hertfordshire, before being appointed a canon of Exeter Cathedral in 1667 and headmaster of the bluecoat school there.

He received the degrees BD from Oxford at 1669 and Cambridge in 1670. In 1672, Michael Boyle, the Archbishop of Dublin, invited him to Dublin as master of the bluecoat school, now the King’s Hospital. There may have been a Lichfield connection here too, for Archbishop Boyle’s uncle, John Boyle, had been Prebendary of Bishopshull in Lichfield Cathedral before coming to Ireland as Bishop of Cork.

In Dublin, Wetenhall received the degree Doctor of Divinity (DD) at Trinity College Dublin, and he also became curate of Saint Werburgh’s Church and chantor of Christ Church Cathedral.

When Michael Boyle became Archbishop of Dublin, he was succeeded by Edward Synge, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross. When Synge died at the end 1678, the dioceses were separated, and early in 1679, Wetenhall became Bishop of Cork and Ross, once again, presumably, through the patronage of Michael Boyle, who was appointed Archbishop of Armagh at the same time.

Wetenhall was consecrated bishop in Christ Church, Dublin. At his own expense, he restored the bishop’s palace in Cork. As one of the seven bishops who remained in Ireland during the dynastic struggles and political troubles that began in 1688, he was treated badly by the supporters of James II, but he insisted on staying on in Ireland.

Following the defeat of James II and the victory of William III, only one Irish bishop, William Sheridan of Kilmore and Ardagh, was deprived of his see in 1693 as a nonjuror. The see was left vacant for three years, and when Wetenhall was appointed Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh in 1699 in succession to William Smyth, he at first declined the appointment in the hope of persuading Sheridan to return to Kilmore.

Later, as Bishop of Kilmore, Wetenhall contributed to the financial support of Sheridan. He also restored the bishop’s house in Kilmore, Co Cavan, rebuilt the cathedral at Ardagh, which has since been demolished, and recovered diocesan lands that had been alienated by predecessors.

He argued in favour of providing the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and other religious works in the Irish language, and compiled grammars of Greek and Latin. He also advocated greater toleration of Dissenters, debated with the Quaker William Penn, and in Dublin he visited the jailed Thomas Emlyn, the first English preacher to describe himself as a ‘Unitarian.’

Edward Wetenhall was married twice. His first wife was buried in Cork cathedral. One son, John Wetenhall, became Archdeacon of Cork; another son, Dr Edward Wetenhall, married Anne Sneyd from Staffordshire.

Failing health seems to have persuaded Wetenhall to spend his later years in London. He died there on 12 November 1713 and is buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey.

In his will, he affirms the Church of England and Ireland to be ‘the purest church in the world,’ although ‘there are divers points which might be altered for the better’ in ‘articles, liturgy, and discipline, but especially in the conditions of clerical communion.’

Edward Wetenhall, by Robert Dunkarton, published by Samuel Woodburn, after Jan van der Vaart, mezzotint, published 1813 (National Portrait Gallery D29583)

‘If I should die, think only this of me’ … why we should never forget, even 100 years later

A wreath of poppies on my grandfather’s grave in Portrane last year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Chapel of the King’s Hospital, Dublin

Remembrance Day Service,

8 p.m., 10 November 2013.

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

For most of you here this evening, I am a little too old perhaps to be your father, but not old enough to be your grandfather.

But even my own father and mother were born after World War I was over … well, just.

How many of you have a grandparent who is 100 or older?

[Wait for answers]

It is unlikely that anyone in this chapel this evening who is younger than I am has ever met someone who can remember World War I.

And so, it is likely that some of you are perplexed about why we are remembering a war that began almost a century ago, and those who died in it.

On the other hand, we are in the middle of a decade of centenaries, when people all over Ireland are recalling and in some cases even commemorating a series of nation-shaping events that took place about 100 years ago:

● The Ulster Covenant and the sinking of the Titanic (1912).
● The Lockout (1913).
● The beginning of World War I (1914).
● The Gallipoli landings (1915);
● The Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme (1916).
● The Russian Revolution (1917).
● The end of World War I (1918).
● The Irish War of Independence … and so on.

But for most of you, I am sure, 100 years is such a long time ago.

So, why do we keep on remembering, laying wreaths, blowing bugles, keeping a minute’s silence, wearing poppies … and so on?

Let me, for a few moments, share just two examples of why I think it is important to continue marking Remembrance Day, and then try to put that into context, asking some of the questions we should be addressing as we mark the centenary of World War I.

Stephen and Bridget (Lynders) Comerford on their wedding day in Donabate in 1905 (Comerford family collection)

My first example is the story of my own grandfather.

Stephen Edward Comerford was hardly a young man when he signed up with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in 1915. He had already been widowed and seen the tragic death of his eldest child. When he left Dublin for Gallipoli in 1915, he was a 47-year-old man, leaving behind in Ranelagh his second wife, my grandmother – they were married just ten years earlier – and her five young children and step-children.

Perhaps he knew he was helping his own country and the smaller nations of Europe; perhaps he hoped for a better job not only for himself, but for his children too when they grew up. Either way, he knew he was doing the right thing – for his country, and for his people – when he joined the Royal Dublin Fusiliers – “the Toffs and the Toughs”– in 1915.

Within days, he was sent to the Greek island of Lemnos and on to Gallipoli and Suvla Bay. He was among the few survivors evacuated to the Greek city of Thessaloniki. But in the severe Greek winter, many of those soldiers suffered frostbite, dysentery and other sicknesses. Then, in the summer’s heat of 1916, more of them came down with malaria and were evacuated from Thessaloniki.

When I visit Thessaloniki, walk through its streets and climb its hills, I imagine how he must have watched his comrades die from the wounds they received in Balkan battles, from the bitter cold of winter and from the frostbite – many of them young enough to be his sons – while his wife and children wondered whether they were ever going to see him again.

As I stop at a church here, a monastery there, I imagine the prayers he prayed, hoping he would return alive to his wife and children in Ranelagh and to her family in Portrane.

Stephen was discharged on 3 May 1916, three days after the Easter Rising ended, and was sent back to Dublin. Malaria was life-threatening but life-saving – for a few months at least. The war ended on 11 November 1918 and a month later, on 14 December, his youngest child – my father, also Stephen Edward Comerford – was born in Rathmines. Later, Stephen was decorated with the three standard World War I medals – the Victory Medal, the British Medal and the 1914-1915 Star. But his health continued to deteriorate, no more children were born, and he died alone in hospital at the age of 53.

My father was the only one of my grandfather’s seven children to have children himself. So malaria saved my grandfather’s life, however briefly, and ensured that he had grandchildren.

He died just two years after my father was born, and was buried in the old Church of Ireland churchyard in Portrane, close to my grandmother’s parents. But the inscription on his gravestone makes no mention of his part in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, or of how he died.

Ironically, the gravestone also gives the wrong age for him at the time of his death. Stephen Comerford was born on 28 December 1867, and died on 21 January 1921 at the age of 53. But the gravestone says he died at the age of 49 – the age he was when he came back from the war in 1916. As his health deteriorated, he must have remained 49 for ever in my grandmother’s heart.

My grandfather’s only reward was three medals – but even these were lost in the various family moves between Ranelagh, Rathmines, Terenure and Rathfarnham. His lonely hospital death was filled with sadness, terror and dread. His story typifies how those soldiers were forgotten by those who sent them to war and how their stories were not handed on in their families, fearful they would be marginalised further as the political climate changed on this island.

Earlier this summer, I visited Grantchester, the home near Cambridge of the English war-time poet Rupert Brooke. Before he died during the Gallipoli landings in 1915, he wrote:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed...

In Ireland, my grandfather remained 49 for ever in my grandmother’s heart. And there is some corner in Thessaloniki that is for ever Ireland.

In the centenary of commemorations we are facing over the next decade, the contribution of men like my grandfather must not be undervalued, still less forgotten.

A wreath of poppies on the memorial to Private Robert Davies in Lichfield City station earlier this month (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

My second example comes from a train station I know well in the middle of England. Part of my life-story is linked to the cathedral city of Lichfield. And regularly, as I go to catch a train at Lichfield City station, my eye is caught by a poppy wreath hanging on a monument to a teenage soldier who was shot dead in the station in 1990. Private Robert Davies was off-duty and only 19 when he was shot dead by the IRA on 1 June 1990, waiting for a train home to his parents in Wales. He had been a soldier for only 12 weeks.

Two years ago, a new walkway behind the station in Lichfield was named Robert Davies Walk. His parents Des and Helen Davies were present, and his father said: “There is now a little part of Wales in the heart of England.”

Robert Davies was little older than most of you are this evening. Today he would be 42. Unlike, my grandfather, who was in his 40s, Robert Davies had no children or grandchildren – he is remembered by his sister and his parents, still grieving a young man murdered by terrorists who had the gall to take life, to murder, to create grief, all in the name of this country, and in the name of all who live on this island.

At the Diocesan Synod for the Diocese of Europe earlier this year, Archdeacon Jonathan Lloyd posed a number of pertinent questions for discussion:

● A hundred years on, what does World War I mean for humanity’s self-understanding, for Europe and its place in the world and our understanding of God?
● Are the centenaries of 2014-2018 celebrating or commemorating?
● What is our purpose and message and what place do penitence and reconciliation have?

World War I is beyond the memory of all of us in this chapel this evening. But all of us live with its consequences. For that war led eventually to the monster that became Nazi Germany; it tore apart the Balkans in a way that continues to create suffering from Bosnia to Bucharest, for Romanies and other minorities across Europe; and it contributed too to too many problems we still face in the Middle East with the drawing of artificial boundaries and the creation of artificial states.

Meanwhile, Archdeacon Jonathan Lloyd suggests a number of ways we can best honour and mark the coming centenaries, including:

● Hearing the stories from people of all sides of the conflict.
● Writing and using prayers that do justice to all the feelings that are going to arise.
● Holding candle-light vigils on 4 August next.
● Examining the lessons we should continue to learn today.
● Remembering key Christian witnesses and heroes. Not all of them are men, as the monument to the women of World War II in Whitehall in London reminds us. Not all of them are soldiers, as in the case of Nurse Edith Cavell, or the brave people who went against popular culture and declared themselves conscientious objectors. They include doctors and medics with the Royal Army Medical Corps. They include non-combatants of every age and generation whose cities, towns, villages and farms were destroyed;
● And, finally, praying for forgiveness, healing and peace.

The memorial to the women of World War II near the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I am a pacifist, but I willingly wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, if only to say that my grandfather and men like him should never have been neglected, and their sad stories should never be forgotten, nor the sad stories of the widows and children they left behind.

I wear it if only to say that the murderers of 19-year-old Robert Davies in Lichfield should not have the last word about the value of a young man’s life, nor about what it is to be Irish today.

This evening, let us pray that we may find the ways needed to put all wars behind us, to put aside all hatred and violence.

Let us pray that when we remember that we remember with sorrow, with gratitude and with forgiveness, but without bitterness or anger.

Let us pray that the call of nationalist ideologies may never twist us, may never distort the love we should have for others, and never allow us to deny our shared humanity.

May God grant to the living Grace,
to the departed Rest,
to the Church and the world peace and concord,
and to all us sinners Eternal Life, Amen.

A prayer for the healing of the nations at Westminster Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin. This sermon was preached at the Remembrance Day Service on 10 November 2013 in the Chapel of the King’s Hospital, Dublin.