Dermot O'Hurley

Dermot O'Hurley (c. 1530 – 19 or 20 June 1584)—also Dermod or Dermond O'Hurley, (Irish: Diarmaid Ó hUrthuile) (Elizabethan English: Darby Hurley or Dr. Hurley)—was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel during the Elizabethan era religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland and who remains one of the most celebrated of the Irish Catholic Martyrs.

Blessed Dermot O'Hurley
Archbishop of Cashel
Memorial plaque at St. Kevin's Church, Camden Row, Dublin
Archdiocese	Cashel
Appointed	September 1581
Term ended	19 or 20 June 1584
Predecessor	Maurice MacGibbon
Successor	David Kearney
Orders
Ordination	9 September 1581
Consecration	10 September 1581 by Pope Gregory XIII
Personal details
Born	c. 1530 Lickadoon Castle, Lickadoon, Ballyneety, Earldom of Desmond, Lordship of Ireland
Died	19 or 20 June 1584 Dublin, Ireland
Buried	St. Kevin's Church, Camden Row, Dublin, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Parents	William O'Hurley
Alma mater	University of Leuven
Sainthood
Feast day	20 June
Venerated in	Ireland
Title as Saint	Blessed
Beatified	27 September 1992 Vatican City by Pope John Paul II
Shrines	St. Kevin's Church, Camden Row, Dublin, Ireland

Born in the Earldom of Desmond as a member of the local Gaelic nobility of Ireland, O'Hurley was sent to Catholic Europe to continue his education, where he eventually became a professor of the Classics, philosophy, theology, and the law at the University of Rheims during the Counter-Reformation. Despite still being a layman, he was appointed by Pope Gregory XIII as Archbishop of Cashel during the ongoing Tudor conquest of Ireland.

After being ordained as a Roman Catholic priest and consecrated to the Episcopate by Thomas Goldwell, a Welsh Catholic refugee Bishop living in Rome, Archbishop O'Hurley was smuggled back into Ireland by a Breton sea captain from Le Croisic and deposited upon Holmpatrick Strand in what is now Skerries, County Dublin.

After a secret and underground religious ministry to both his fellow Gaels and the Old English population of The Pale, O'Hurley voluntarily surrendered himself in order to save one of his lay protectors, the Baron of Slane, from being imprisoned and executed in his place. After he was first imprisoned and tortured by being "put to the hot boots" in Dublin Castle, with the full knowledge and approval of the Queen, by Lord Justices Adam Loftus and Henry Wallop, Archbishop O'Hurley was sentenced to death by a drumhead court-martial. His death sentence was officially for high treason, but it was in reality for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, embrace the Elizabethan religious settlement, and accept the control over the Church by the State, which Queen Elizabeth I and her officials enforced at the time by defining Recusancy and even unspoken mental dissent as traitorous.

On the early morning of 19 or 20 June 1584, Archbishop O'Hurley was covertly taken outside the city walls of Dublin and hanged from a noose woven from green willow branches, near the modern junction of Lower Baggot Street and Fitzwilliam Street in what is now College Green. As soon as the news of his torture and execution spread, Archbishop O'Hurley was immediately revered as a Martyr throughout Catholic Europe.

After the successful fight for Catholic Emancipation between 1778 and 1829 finally ended the religious persecution that had begun under King Henry VIII, interest in Archbishop O'Hurley and the other Irish Catholic Martyrs during the preceding centuries revived. Due to the wealth of surviving documentation, Archbishop O'Hurley was considered one the most promising causes for Roman Catholic Martyrdom during the successive Apostolic Processes held in Dublin between 1904 and 1930, after which the results were submitted to the Holy See. On 27 September 1992, Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley was beatified by Pope John Paul II and remains one of the most celebrated of the 24 formally recognized Irish Catholic Martyrs. His feast day is June 20.

Early life

The Former Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Ailbe in Emly, County Tipperary, where Dermot O'Hurley was first educated.

O'Hurley was born into the Gaelic nobility of Ireland, either in or near Emly, County Tipperary, around the year 1530. His father, William, was the O'Hurley clan's Chief of the Name and Bailiff of Emly, with duties similar to a Tacksman, for James FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmond. Dermot's mother was Honora Ni Brien, a descendant of the O'Brien dynasty of Thomond. Both sides of the Archbishop's family claimed descent from the royal derbhfine of the Dál gCais, one of the most powerful Irish clans in the history of Munster or of Gaelic Ireland. The future Archbishop had one sister named Honora Ni Hurley. The "William óg Hurley of Lickadoon" listed among the Desmond rebels to be pardoned is believed to have been the Archbishop's brother. He also had much younger brother named Andrew O'Hurley, whom, as of 1642, was over 80 years old, blind, paralyzed, and living in Portugal. Through his brother Andrew, the Archbishop also had a nephew named John.

The future Archbishop is believed to have received a Classical Christian education rooted in the Trivium at the Catholic school overseen by his kinsman, Bishop Thomas O'Hurley, to whom he may have been given in fosterage, at the Cathedral and monastery founded by Saint Ailbe of Emly. The O'Hurley family later moved to Lickadoon Castle, Ballyneety, County Limerick, where O'Hurley was educated by tutors and then sent to Flemish Brabant to continue his education at the University of Leuven. In 1551 he graduated with a Master of Arts degree, then a doctorate of Law and was appointed a professor of philosophy in one of that university's greater colleges, where he remained for 15 years and acquired a high reputation as a Renaissance humanist for his commentaries on Aristotle. According to Richard Verstegen, in 1574 O'Hurley was appointed a professor of canon and secular law in the Faculty of Law of Reims University by Cardinal Louis de Guise, at which he spent 4 years.

According to historian Benignus Millet, who investigated O'Hurley's life in multiple European archives of the period, "The relevant registers and other records of Rheims University disappeared during the French Revolution. A thorough search at the Archives Départmentales in Châlons-sur-Marne in Sept. 1981 confirmed that these documents were lost and that the surviving documentation concerns bursaries and properties."

After moving to Rome around 1568, O'Hurley advised the Papacy to support a possible invasion of Ireland by Habsburg Spain to end the religious persecution of Irish Catholics. In 1581, O'Hurley also acted as interpreter for Richard Eustace, the brother and official representative in Rome of the Old English Second Desmond Rebellion leader Viscount Baltinglass.

Although it was later claimed by Lord Justices Adam Loftus and Henry Wallop in their letters to Sir Francis Walsingham that Archbishop O'Hurley had been employed by the Roman Inquisition, this is not sustainable by other evidence.

According to Benignus Millet, "A diligent search made in May 1982, at my request, by the archivist, Innocenzo Marianni, O.S.B., failed to discover there any record showing that he had been employed by the Holy Office. Moreover, O'Hurley's name does not occur among those who were on the pay rolls of the Roman curia or the Papal household. It would seem, therefore, that he was privately employed, in the service of one of the cardinals. He may also have taught, perhaps for a brief period, in one of the colleges or seminaries established in Rome since the Council of Trent, though no evidence of this has emerged."

Furthermore, a 33-line work of praise poetry in Renaissance Latin, which was composed to celebrate Dermot O'Hurley's subsequent promotion to the Episcopate, confirms that he had always been merely a theology professor. At the absolute most, O'Hurley may have sometimes been asked by the Roman Inquisition to advise them about both secular and Canon law.

Fugitive archbishop

Though still a layman, Dermot O'Hurley was recommended to Pope Gregory XIII for the next Archbishop of Cashel by Cardinal Nicolas de Pellevé, the unofficial but de facto Cardinal Protector of the Catholic Church in Ireland and in Scotland, during a consistory meeting on 11 September 1581. He was first ordained and consecrated in Rome by the exiled Welsh Catholic Bishop of St Asaph, Thomas Goldwell, and set out on his mission in 1583.

In 1570 Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy, continuing the Caesaropapism of her father's religious policy, and for the religious persecution of the Catholics under her rule in the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis. This had led to the Second Desmond Rebellion in 1579–83, which was still in progress when O'Hurley was required to travel back to his native Ireland. Through their elaborate espionage system, the Queen's Court in London and her officials in Dublin Castle had immediate knowledge of Dermot O'Hurley's appointment to the See of Cashel, and Sir Francis Walsingham's spies and priest hunters were soon following his trail.

O'Hurley's voyage was fraught with danger because of the state of war between the Pope and the Queen of England, but he accepted the risks involved and arranged for a sea captain from Drogheda to smuggle him from the French port of Le Croisic into Ireland. Archbishop O'Hurley disembarked upon Holmpatrick Strand in what is now Skerries, County Dublin in the autumn of 1583 and was met by a priest named John Dillon, who accompanied him to Drogheda, where they lodged in a hostelry.

Archbishop O'Hurley's letters, which had been sent via a different ship, were intercepted by English privateers, who handed the letters over to the Lord Justices in Dublin.

Map of Cavan town from 1591 showing its market square and the Clan O'Reilly castle and stronghold upon Tullymongan Hill

After being advised by a resident of Drogheda that Lord Justices Loftus and Wallop already knew their location, O'Hurley and Dillon decided to leave for Slane Castle, where they were concealed by Thomas Fleming, 10th Baron Slane, at one point inside a priest hole. Archbishop O'Hurley also covertly travelled from Slane Castle to Cavan to visit with some fellow priests whom he had known while living in Catholic Europe. At the time, Cavan town and County Cavan was the territory of the Clan O'Reilly. Soon after his return, O'Hurley was recognised during a visit to Slane Castle by the Baron's first cousin, Lord Chief Justice Sir Robert Dillon.

According to Philip O'Sullivan Beare, "A grave question was started at dinner, in the presence of the squint-eyed Robert Dillon, one of the Queen's judges. The heretics, giving each his own opinion, freely proceeded to such extreme folly, that Dermot, who was present, and long kept silent lest he should betray himself, could not any longer stand their rashness, and so, to the great astonishment of all, he easily refuted the silly doctrines of the heretics, with an air of authority, and great eloquence and learning. Hereupon Dillon was led to surmise that this was some distinguished person who might greatly obstruct heresy."

Once his suspicions were aroused, Sir Robert Dillon made inquiries, eventually uncovered the real identity of his cousin's houseguest.

According to an anonymously written Elizabethan era manuscript preserved in the Bodleian Library and first published by Analecta Hibernica in 1930, "After [Dillon] departed the house, he wrote a letter to the Lord of Slane advising him to lay hands upon the stranger who was lodging in his house, lest the State might hardly judge of his residence there & bring him to account for the same. The Lord of Slane was exceedingly angry at the receipt of this letter & thought with[in] himself that it were a great point of discourtesy & contrary to the privileges of hospitality to apprehend a stranger who, never was in his house before, & thereupon did forbear to trouble and soon after went away."

After learning of Baron Slane's feelings touching the matter, Sir Robert Dillon immediately informed Dublin Castle. Baron Slane was immediately summoned by Lord Justices Adam Loftus and Sir Henry Wallop.

According to the Bodleian Library account, "[They] examined [the Lord of Slane] upon all the points aforesaid who answered that he knew him neither to be priest nor bishop, and if Sir Robert Dillon knew him to be so dangerous a member that it was rather his fault (being a Privy Councillor) not to lay hands upon him. To be short no excuse could avail. But either the Lord of Slane must search and find the Bishop or else lie for the cause himself: the cause standing so his Lordship made choice to search for him & there upon a warrant was given unto him for the apprehension of the Bishop, & all subjects commanded to aid him therein (if need required). Then the Lord of Slane, being sore grieved in his heart to be employed on such a service, began his journey towards the parts of Munster."

The Elizabethan Manor House at Ormonde Castle, Carrick-on-Suir.

Meanwhile, the Archbishop had already left Slane Castle and was staying with Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, a Protestant, referred to as "Black Thomas" (Irish: Tomás dubh) (lit. "Thomas the Black", fig. "Thomas the Puritan"), who was then the Lord Treasurer of Ireland.

As his nickname suggests, the Earl was a Protestant and had played a role in ending the Second Desmond Rebellion through scorched earth and total war that triggered a State-imposed famine, which killed an estimated third of Munster's population. At the same time, however, the Earl's entire family, his Old English tenants, and all the Irish clans subject to his leadership were Catholic Recusants, who were covertly being allowed religious toleration. Meanwhile, Loftus, Wallop, and many other officials in Dublin Castle, greatly envied the Earl's favour with the Queen and kept him accordingly under constant surveillance in the hopes of implicating him in illegally tolerating Catholicism or in anything else that that they might construe as high treason. Despite the extremely high risk, however, the Earl of Ormond seems to have agreed to conceal and protect Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley, as long as he avoided matters other than his religious ministry and remained within the confines of County Tipperary.

While a guest at the Earl's still extant Elizabethan Manor House at Carrick-on-Suir, the Archbishop wrote a letter to Miler Magrath, the former Franciscan Friar who had become the Protestant Church of Ireland's Archbishop of Cashel. In the letter, Archbishop O'Hurley both requested a meeting and suggested nonviolent mutual religious toleration of one another's competing apostolates. The Earl of Ormond, to whom O'Hurley had assigned the delivery, did not trust Magrath and secretly kept the letter, which still survives at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University (MS Carte 55, fol. 546).

Holy Cross Abbey, Thurles, County Tipperary

Immediately after making a pilgrimage to Holy Cross Abbey near Thurles in September 1583, Archbishop O'Hurley was met at Ormonde Castle by Baron Slane. The Baron explained the imminent danger to both himself and his family.

The Bodleian Library account gives the Archbishop's exact reply as follows, "My good Lord, rather than your Honour should take any harm or lose the least part of anything which you do esteem in this world for me or in my default, I would not rest until I came in person to your Lordship with the simplest boy that followeth your Lordship & am now ready to sacrifice my life to discharge your Lordship of any danger that may befall you on my behalf."

During their journey to Dublin Castle together, the conversation between the Archbishop and the Baron turned to the recent conversion to Anglicanism by Peter Power, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ferns. Archbishop O'Hurley commented about his former colleague, "Many who are lions before the battle are timid stags when the hour of trial comes. Lest this prove true of me, I daily pray to our good Lord for strength; for 'let him that thinketh himself to stand look lest he fall.'"

The unwritten laws governing hospitality were considered sacred among the Gaelic nobility of Ireland and were just as important to Gaelicised Hiberno-Normans like the Earl of Ormond and the Baron Slane. The Earl is alleged to have felt insulted by the arrest of a guest in his house who was under his protection. Irish émigré chronicler Philip O'Sullivan Beare considered the Archbishop's arrest to be so heinous of an insult under the traditional code of conduct that the Earl should have raised the clans subject to him and taken up arms against Baron Slane and the Lord Justices. Even though the Earl chose not to take up arms, O'Sullivan Beare does credit him with doing everything he possibly could to save Archbishop O'Hurley from the executioners. Other more recent historians, however, believe that the Earl of Ormond may secretly have colluded with Baron Slane and played just as central of a role in arranging the Archbishop's arrest. The Bodleian Library manuscript, for example, alleges that the critical conversation at Ormonde Castle between Archbishop O'Hurley and the Baron Slane took place in the Earl of Ormonde's presence.

Imprisonment and torture

The Bermingham Tower, where Archbishop O'Hurley was held, as was typical for all other State prisoners at the time, is one of the sole parts of Dublin Castle that still survives from the Elizabethan era.

On 8 October 1583 Archbishop O'Hurley was handed over by Baron Slane to Lord Justices Wallop and Loftus and imprisoned in Dublin Castle. Despite his cooperation, Baron Slane was ordered to remain in Dublin as a prisoner of Archbishop Adam Loftus at the Manor of St. Sepulchre, "until the case was further examined."

Under orders from both Loftus and Wallop, Edward Waterhouse, a senior member of the Irish Privy Council, conducted a series of interrogations of the Archbishop between 8 and 20 October 1583. The Archbishop admitted that he had been asked by the Cardinal Protector of Ireland to deliver sealed letters to the Rebel Earl and the other leaders of the Second Desmond Rebellion. O'Hurley explained, however, that he had chosen to leave those letters in France, as, "he would not meddle", in matters other than his religious mission, which, as he repeated insisted, was purely a peaceful one. Finding these results unsatisfactory, Loftus and Wallop wrote to Sir Francis Walsingham on 20 October 1583, seeking further instructions.

In his response, Walsingham ordered both Justices to use, "torture or any other severe manner of proceeding" against the Archbishop, "to gain his knowledge of all foreign practices against Her Majesty's States."

In response, Loftus and Wallop wrote back upon 10 December that they lacked the necessary instruments of torture and recommended instead that Archbishop O'Hurley be transferred to the Tower of London. Instead, Walsingham ordered them to extract information from O'Hurley, "not only of any practice or disturbance pretended against the Land in particular, but also of any foreign conspiracy against Her Majesty in England or any other part of her dominions". Loftus and Wallop were ordered to try gentle persuasion at first, but if that failed, to "put him to the torture... which was to toast his feet against the fire with hot boots."

According to Philip O'Sullivan Beare, "First he was brought before Adam, the Chancellor, and Henry, the Treasurer, and civilly and kindly invited to follow the tenets of the heretics, and promised large rewards on condition of abjuring his sacred character; relinquishing the office received from the Pope, and (O villainy!) entering upon the Archbishopric under the Queen's authority. He told them that he was bound and resolved never to desert the Church, Faith, or Vicar of Christ Jesus for any consideration. Then the Chancellor and Treasurer endeavoured to deceive him by cunning arguments, straining every nerve to establish the truth of their falsehoods. Dermot, not relishing this, especially as he was not allowed to reply to their nonsense, bade them, stupid and ignorant men (such was his high spirit), not to offer ridiculous and false doctrines to him, an Archbishop, and Doctor of celebrated academies. Then the heretics, filled with anger, exclaimed: 'If we cannot convince you by argument, we will make you quit this your false law and embrace our religion, or feel our power.'"

On 7 March 1584, Archbishop O'Hurley was accordingly subjected to the boiling boot by Edward Waterhouse. His bare feet were imprisoned in iron boots, filled with oil and water, that were slowly heated over a fire until the water boiled away both skin and flesh left the Archbishop's bones partially exposed. To everyone's shock, Archbishop O'Hurley refused to embrace Protestantism, "confess" to any political offenses, or "cooperate" with framing Baron Slane or the Earl of Ormond, whom Adam Loftus and Henry Wallop hated and envied, for high treason against the Queen. Instead, Archbishop O'Hurley was heard to repeatedly cry out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me"!

After the torture was finally ceased on fear that the executioner, Edward Waterhouse, might be punished for accidentally killing the Archbishop without orders, O'Hurley was returned to his cell inside Dublin Castle and received medical treatment from a fellow priest named Fr. Charles MacMorris.

When the Archbishop had recovered enough to sit up and to limp a little, the Queen's officials sent visitors into Dublin Castle, including Thomas Jones, the Anglican Bishop of Meath, offering O'Hurley a high position within the Church of Ireland hierarchy in return for taking the Oath of Supremacy. Even his only sister, Honora Ni Hurley, according to David Rothe "was induced to go in and tempt him to apostatise and she urgently besought him to yield; but he, frowning on her, ordered her to fall at his knees and humbly beg pardon of God and absolution for so grave a crime against God, so hurtful to her own soul, and so abhorred by her brother."

According to Fr. Charles Patrick Meehan, "The charge on which he was arrested was alleged treason committed in foreign parts; and the Irish crown-lawyers, taking this into consideration, and doubting whether he could be found guilty, the law not stretching in this particular so far as it did in England, resolved, as he had neither land or goods, that he should be executed by martial law rather than by an ordinary trial."

According to surviving correspondence between Dublin and Whitehall, Queen Elizabeth I was reluctant to dispense with a fair trial under English Law and authorize the Lord Justices to "take a shorter way with him by martiall law", but her mind was changed by Sir Francis Walsingham at the urging of Loftus and Wallop, who alleged that a public trial would allow the Archbishop to make an "impudent and clamorous denial" of the charges against him. Loftus and Wallop also feared that a public trial by jury might result in an acquittal for "treasons committed in foreign parts against Her Majesty" owing to the lack of evidence that a crime had been committed and to the widespread Catholic sympathies among the Old English population of the Pale.

According to Fr. Meehan, "Foreseeing what his fate would be if arraigned before such a tribunal, twenty-four burgesses of Dublin, availing themselves of a statute passed in the reign of Edward IV, memorialized to have him delivered to them on bail, in order that he might have the benefit of common law, to which, as a civilian, he was fully entitled. But their application was refused..."

On 28 April 1584, a direct order was sent from Walsingham on behalf of the Queen, expressly forbidding the further use of torture, while also adding that it was the Queen's pleasure that Archbishop O'Hurley, "being so notorious and ill a Subject", should be executed.

Martyrdom

Richard Verstegen's depiction of the 1584 torture and execution of Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley. The 1579 hanging of fellow Irish Catholic Martyrs Bishop Patrick O'Hely and Friar Conn Ó Ruairc is shown in the background.

Upon learning that the Earl of Ormonde, by whose influence and power they feared Dermot O'Hurley's life would be saved, was coming to Dublin Castle to congratulate new Lord Deputy Sir John Perrot, Loftus and Wallop decided to put the Archbishop to death as soon as possible. On 19 June 1584, Loftus and Wallop, with Perrot's permission, tried the Archbishop before a drumhead court-martial, where the Papal Bull documenting his consecration to the Episcopate, his letters of introduction, and other documents were presented as evidence against him. Loftus and Wallop then issued a death warrant to the Knight Marshal, with orders to, "do execution", upon Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley. In the early morning of 19, or 20, June 1584, O'Hurley was taken out of the Bermingham Tower in Dublin Castle at dawn. Despite efforts at both silence and secrecy, the Archbishop's fellow Catholic prisoners took notice and called out that O'Hurley was innocent. Power, the former Bishop of Ferns, who, after learning of O'Hurley's constancy, had returned to Catholicism and once again had again been imprisoned, too, "called out aloud that he rather deserved that fate for the scandal he had formerly given, but that Hurley was an innocent and holy man. Upon which the jailer severely flogged him and the others, and so reduced them to silence."

As Lord Justice Henry Wallop and three or four guards went before him, the Archbishop was drawn on a hurdle through the Garden Gate, or Postern Gate, in the city walls of Dublin to be hanged in a willow forest, either in St Stephen's Green or at Hoggen Green. The usual location of the gallows in Elizabethan era Dublin was at the modern junction of Lower Baggot Street (Irish: Sráid Bhagóid Íochtarach), formerly called "Gallows Road", and Fitzwilliam Street and between Fitzwilliam Street and Pembroke Street.

The execution party was taken by surprise by the arrival of a group of Dublin city worthies, who had come to Hoggen Green to shoot an archery match and wager upon the results.

According to the Bodleian Library account, upon seeing the archery match, "The Bishop greatly rejoiced, & being upon the ladder, called to them to draw near & then desired the warders which were about him guarding him with their halberds for God's sake to respite his life until he did utter a few words in the presence of those honest men, whom it pleased God to send to witness his innocent death, which request being granted, he stood upon the ladder & with great humility & patience uttered these few words following."

In his speech from the gallows ladder, the Archbishop proclaimed,

Gentlemen, - First I thank my Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ because it hath pleased his Divine Providence to send you hither to bear testimony of my innocent death, being it was meant I should die obscurely, as may be seen by sending me to the place of execution so early. Be it therefore known unto you (good Christians) that I am a priest anointed & also a Bishop, although unworthy of so sacred dignities, and no cause could they find against me that might in the least deserve the paines of death, but merely for my function of priesthood wherein they have proceeded against me in all pointes cruelly contrary to their own laws, which doth privilege any man that is worth ten pounds in goods not to die by Martial Law, which I leave between them & the Majesty of the Almighty & I do enjoin you (Dear Christian Brethren) to manifest the same to the world and also to bear witness on the Day of Judgment of my innocent death, which I endure for my function and profession of the most holy Catholic Faith.

The ruins of St. Kevin's in Camden Row, burial place of Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley, as they appear today.

After "so desiring them to join with him in prayer recommending his soul to God", and "forgiving his torturers with all his heart", Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley was turned off the ladder and hanged, allegedly from a noose woven out of willow branches in order to further prolong his sufferings by causing a slow death from strangulation. Afterwards, like other Elizabethan era execution victims in Dublin, Archbishop O'Hurley was cast into a mass grave located in a nearby field. His body was secretly exhumed, placed in a wooden urn by London-born Recusant William Fitzsimon, and reburied under cover of darkness in consecrated ground at St. Kevin's Church, Camden Row, Dublin.

The clothing the Archbishop wore on the day of his death were secretly preserved by the Recusants of Dublin as relics of his martyrdom. Many miracles are also said to have been wrought at his gravesite, which has remained a site of Christian pilgrimage ever since.

Legacy

On 20 June 1584, the same day as O'Hurley's execution, the Archbishop's torturer, Edward Waterhouse, was dubbed knight by Sir John Perrot inside Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, officially because Waterhouse, "dispended yearly more than a thousand marks."

As word of his execution spread, Archbishop O'Hurley was immediately revered as a martyr throughout Catholic Europe.

The ongoing religious persecution that led to his martyrdom also became highly significant as the primary cause of the Nine Years War, which formally began when Irish clan chief Red Hugh O'Donnell expelled English High Sheriff of Donegal Humphrey Willis, but not before Red Hugh listed his reasons for taking up arms against the House of Tudor and alluded to the recent torture and executions of Archbishop O'Hurley and Bishop Patrick O'Hely. According to Philip O'Sullivan Beare, "Being surrounded there [Willis] surrendered to Roe by whom he was dismissed in safety with an injunction to remember his words, that the Queen and her officers were dealing unjustly with the Irish; that the Catholic religion was contaminated by impiety; that holy bishops and priests were inhumanely and barbarously tortured; that Catholic noblemen were cruelly imprisoned and ruined; that wrong was deemed right; that he himself had been treacherously and perfidiously kidnapped; and that for these reasons he would neither give tribute or allegiance to the English."

Several accounts of his life and death were printed and reached a wide audience.

Exiled English Recusant poet Richard Verstegan wrote a detailed Renaissance Latin account of Archbishop O'Hurley's martyrdom in the volume Theatrum crudelitatum Hæreticorum nostri temporis ("Theatre of the Cruelties of the Heretics of our Time"), which was published at Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands in 1587. Historian J.J. Meagher has written of Verstegan, "He enhanced his account with an engraving which was a composite representation of the three Irish martyrs, Dermot O'Hurley, Patrick O'Healy, and Conn O'Rourke. The printed word helped considerably to propagate and preserve the reputation of martyrdom. There were at least eight editions of Verstegan's Theatrum up to 1607, and these contributed in no small way to maintaining the fama martyrii overseas. Moreover, John Bridgewater, an English priest, reprinted word for word Verstegan's account of the martyrdom in 1588."

Detailed accounts of Archbishop O'Hurley's life and death were also written and published by Philip O'Sullivan Beare, David Rothe, Luke Wadding, Richard Stanihurst, Anthony Bruodin, John Lynch, John Coppinger, and John Mullin.

Archbishop Adam Loftus, through his daughter Anne Loftus, who married Sir Henry Colley, was the ancestor of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who was baptized in 1767 by a Church of Ireland clergyman at St. Kevin's Church in Camden Row. It was ultimately the Duke of Wellington who, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1829, forced a bill granting Catholic Emancipation in the British Isles through Parliament and persuaded a highly reluctant King George IV to grudgingly grant the bill Royal Assent. Sir Henry Wallop, on the other hand, is the ancestor of every subsequent Earl of Portsmouth.

Also following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, interest in Archbishop O'Hurley was rekindled by the republication of Bishop David Rothe's Analecta Sancta and Philip O'Sullivan Beare's Historiae Catholicae Iberniae Compendium. According to J.J. Meagher, "The reawakened reputation of martyrdom was further strengthened in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the historical works and critical editions of manuscripts published by Patrick F. Moran and others."

In 1904, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Ireland began an investigation into Archbishop O'Hurley's life and death, as well as those of the other Irish Catholic Martyrs. One of the most valuable resources was found to be the documents and letters written by the men, like Wallop and Loftus, who tortured and executed him and which had been examined in the Public Record Office in London. In response, Archbishop O'Hurley, whose life and martyrdom had been found to be one of the most meticulously documented and was therefore seen as one of the most promising Causes for Roman Catholic Sainthood, was declared a Servant of God.

In the 12 February 1915 Apostolic decree In Hibernia, heroum nutrice, Pope Benedict XV formally authorized the introduction of Archbishop O'Hurley's Cause for Roman Catholic Sainthood. During a further Apostolic Process held at Dublin between 1917 and 1930, the evidence surrounding 260 alleged cases for martyrdom were further investigated, after which the findings were again submitted to the Holy See.

On 27 September 1992, O'Hurley was beatified by Pope John Paul II, alongside 16 other Irish martyrs. Following his Beatification, a memorial plaque was installed by the Dublin City Council at St Kevin's Churchyard, at the insistence of local activist James O'Doherty.

Folklore

• According to Burke's 1879 History of the Irish Lord Chancellors, "Multitudes of pilgrims for three centuries flocked to his tomb, which the fancy, perhaps the superstition, of the people clothed with many legends." In local Irish folklore, ghost stories about passersby on dark and stormy nights seeing Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley offering the Tridentine Mass in black Requiem vestments upon a makeshift altar over his grave in St. Kevin's churchyard are commonly told. It is said, when the Archbishop reaches the moment of Transubstantiation and the Raising of the Host, that both O'Hurley and the altar disappear and only darkness remains.

In popular culture

• The Recusant poet Richard Verstegan composed an Elizabethan English elegy about the Archbishop's martyrdom, entitled "Slane's Treason; or The Fall of the Baron of Slane." The poem was set to music by celebrated Richard Cruise, the official harpist to the Earl of Ormond, and became widely popular, both among Hiberno-English-speaking Recusants throughout The Pale and even among the Irish clans throughout Gaelic Ireland.

See also

• Margaret Ball
• Oliver Plunkett
• Francis Taylor (martyr)

Sources

• "Blessed Dermot O'Hurley". Saints.SQPN.com. Star Quest Production Network. Archived from the original on 4 October 2011. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
• Boylan, Henry (1998). A dictionary of Irish biography (3rd ed.). Dublin: Gill and MacMillan. p. 334. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.
• Brady, W. Maziere (1876). The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, A.D. 1400 to 1875. Vol. 2. Rome: Tipografia Della Pace.
• Corish, Patrick J.; Millet, Benignus, eds. (2005). "Dermot O'Hurley". The Irish martyrs. Irish theological quarterly monograph series. Vol. 1. Dublin [u.a.]: Four Courts Press. pp. 66–80. ISBN 9781851828586.
• Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I., eds. (1986). Handbook of British Chronology (3rd, reprinted 2003 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X.
• McNeill, Charles (1911). "Dermond O'Hurley". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• Moody, T. W.; Martin, F. X.; Byrne, F. J., eds. (1984). Maps, genealogies, lists: a companion to Irish History, part II. New History of Ireland. Vol. 11. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821745-5.
• O'Doherty, James (June 2005). "Dermot O'Hurley, a hero of his time". news4.ie. Dublin: NewsFour. Archived from the original on 19 November 2007. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
• O'Sullivan-Beare, Philip (1903). "Dermot O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel, the most unconquerable and illustrious Martyr". In Byrne, Matthew J. (ed.). Ireland under Elizabeth : chapters towards a history of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth being a portion of the history of Catholic Ireland. Translated by Matthew J. Byrne. Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Walker. pp. 33–36. OCLC 808171203. Archived from the original on 24 October 2014. Retrieved 24 October 2014 – via electronic edition compiled by Benjamin Hazard. Published 2008. CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts.

Periodicals

• Millet, Benignus (1983) "The Ordination of Dermot O'Hurley, 1581", Collectanea Hibernica, pp. 12-21.
• "Out of Romish Collections of Annals of Ireland", by Charles McNeil, "Rawlinson Manuscripts (Class B)", Analecta Hibernica, March 1930, pp. 125-128.

External links

• Dermot O'Hurley, Dictionary of Irish Biography