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Richard Creagh - Archbishop of Armagh
 Before we left on our "Walking in the Ancestor's Footsteps" tour, I spent months researching each of the different people in the family tree. There was so much information to be found for both sides of our family, and we designed our trip so as to visit places where they lived, worked, married and died.
However, once on the trip we discovered so many more interesting facts and information.
- Sir William Creagh was one great grandfather that proved to be a "brick wall" until finally one day, I read an article written about Sir Michael Creagh and discovered the missing link.
- In doing so there was another very important Creagh in the family history. He was poisoned in the Tower of London, supposedly on Queen Elizabeth's orders.
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| Chapel of St Peter and Vincula |
I contacted the Tower of London, and they researched for me where he was buried, which was underneath the slab of the Chapel of St Peter and Vincula.
- The same place as Anne Boleyn was buried.
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| We sat on the left hand side next to the column |
- They also explained that the Chapel was closed and could only be accessed with a Tour of the Tower with the Beefeaters!
- They also advised no photos to be taken inside. (The inside photos are from the internet)
- So we lined up with hundreds more to do just that!
- Then we followed the path to the dungeons where he was kept. Not a nice place at all.
- But who was Richard Creagh the Archbishop? and what is his relationship to Sir William Creagh?
was the son of Nicholas Creagh b 1500.
Nicholas was the son of William Creagh b 1466 d 1521
who had a son Christopher Creagh b 1486 d 1541
his son was John Creagh b 1525 d 1601
He had a son John Creagh b 1561 d 1614
He had a son Michael Creagh b 1595
His sons were Sir William Creagh, Sir Michael Creagh and Peter Creagh.
- The computer tells me that he is 1st cousin, 12 times removed!
- Perhaps the best stories relating to Richard Creagh can be found online and the following gives an account of his life.
(From wikipedia)
Richard Creagh (born at Limerick early in the sixteenth century; died in the Tower
of London about December 1586) was an Irish
Roman Catholic clergyman who was the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland in the second half of the
sixteenth century.
The son of a merchant, he followed the same calling in his youth and made many voyages to Spain. A providential escape from shipwreck led him to embrace a religious life, and after some years of study abroad he was ordained priest. Returning to Ireland, he taught school for a time at Limerick.
He refused nominations for the See of Limerick and See of Cashel, but the Papal nuncio, David Wolfe, determined to conquer his humility, named him for the primacy when it became vacant, and would accept no refusal. Creagh was consecrated at Rome, and in 1564 returned to Ireland as Archbishop of Armagh.
Shane O'Neill was then the most potent of the Ulster chiefs. From the first he and Creagh disagreed. O'Neill hated England; Creagh preached loyalty to England in Armagh Cathedral, even in O'Neill's presence. O'Neill retorted by burning down the cathedral.
- Creagh then cursed him and refused to absolve him because he had put a
priest to death. Shane retaliated by threatening the life of the primate, and
by declaring publicly that there was no one on earth he hated so much as
Creagh, except Queen Elizabeth I, whom he confessed he hated more.
In spite of all this, Creagh was arrested and imprisoned by the English.
Twice he escaped, but he was retaken and in 1567 lodged in the Tower
of London, and kept there till his death. From his repeated examinations
before the English Privy Council his enmity to Shane O'Neill and his
unwavering loyalty to England were made plain. But his steadfastness in the
Catholic faith and his popularity in Ireland were considered crimes, and in
consequence the Council refused to set him free.
Not content with this, his enemies assailed his moral character. The
daughter of his jailer was urged to charge him with having assaulted her. The
charge was investigated in public court, where the girl retracted, declaring
her accusation absolutely false.
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Death
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It has been said that Creagh was poisoned in
prison, and this, whether true or false, was widely believed at the time of his
death. The principal suspect was the notorious double agent Robert
Poley, best known for his role as agent
provocateur in the Babington Plot and his suspected role in the killing
of Christopher Marlowe. Poley, who was a fellow
prisoner in the Tower during Creagh's last years there, is said to have visited
him several times, but the suspicion seems to be based on his general bad
character, rather than on any direct evidence
- These following stories are interesting to read.
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A dangerous man to be among the Irish”
Published in Early Modern History (1500–1700), Features, Gaelic Ireland, Issue 3 (Autumn 2000), Volume 8
Portrait of
Elizabeth to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588),
depicted in the background. Elizabeth's hand rests on the globe, ...
In 1585 the English privy council
branded Richard Creagh ‘a dangerous man to be among the Irish for the reverence
that is by that nation borne unto him’, and ordered that he should be detained
in the Tower of London. The eighteen-year incarceration of the Archbishop of
Armagh in London and Dublin was acutely embarrassing for the authorities. He
had been the subject of anxious enquiries on the part of King Philip II of
Spain, was well known to Irish students at the law schools in London and had a
wide circle of friends in many European countries. How had this ageing
dissident achieved such iconic standing as to be too dangerous for release from
captivity?
Early life
Born in Limerick about 1523,
Richard Creagh was of a family of Gaelic Ulster origin, as he became proudly
aware. By the time of his birth the Creaghs were long enfranchised within the
municipality and he probably lived on the street that bore the family name. He
grew up in a heterogeneous milieu, imbibing the urban values of the Englishry
and Gaelic culture through the Irish language. Creagh was apprenticed to a
merchant in Limerick who dealt in spices and herbs. According to the early
biographers, the young man was ill-at-ease in the commercial world. His dismay
at the practice of adulterating saffron to increase its weight provoked a
career change to the priesthood. Another more dramatic account has Creagh
escaping drowning in Spain by lingering to hear Mass as his ship foundered.
To accomplish his plan Creagh equipped himself with a knowledge of Latin in
Limerick, before departing for the university of Louvain where he studied
philosophy and theology. He matriculated in 1549. While a scholar there he was
sponsored by a bursary from the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Creagh was most
likely ordained priest in the early 1550s in the diocese of Mechelin. On
completing his postgraduate studies he returned to his native Limerick about
1557 to take up the work of school teaching. Shortly thereafter the restored
Catholic regime under Queen Mary was overturned by the Reformation of Queen
Elizabeth.
Abiding commitment to education
Richard Creagh founded and taught
in a grammar school located in Limerick’s former Dominican priory. He was
joined after 1560 by Thomas Leverous, former Bishop of Kildare, who had been
deprived for refusing to take the oath of supremacy. The success of this
academy was an early sign of Creagh’s abiding commitment to education.
Throughout his career he displayed the humanist’s zeal for reform through
pedagogy, advocating the foundation of more schools and a university in
Ireland. He prided himself on having obtained a bull from Pope Pius IV
for the foundation of a pontifical college in Ireland, and seventeenth-century
commentators attributed the foundation of seminaries for Irish students on the
continent to his pioneering efforts.
Creagh’s own scholarly interests included Irish history and topography, the
Irish language, ecclesiastical history and theology. Much of his output may be
dated to the years immediately before and after his graduation as MA at
Louvain. He produced Chronicon Hiberniae, possibly incorporating
Topographia Hiberniae for which he was also known. A short summary of his
treatise on Irish grammar survives, sufficient to show that he had a thorough
grasp of the language. This work may have been written for his students in
Limerick, as was his bilingual catechism, The essential duty of a Christian,
produced about 1560. Clearly Richard Creagh was fixing his Catholic reforming
mission on the Gaelic as well as the English community of Ireland.
Reluctant Archbishop of Armagh
By 1562 Creagh’s growing
reputation as scholar and teacher recommended him for promotion as
bishop. He had already come to the attention of the curia while at Louvain, his
name being canvassed by the general of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, for the
vacant sees of Cashel and Limerick, but the unambitious Creagh refused both
offers. The papal emissary David Wolfe, whose brief included spotting persons
of talent, adjured Creagh by his oath sworn to the papacy as bachelor of
divinity to go to Rome to be appointed either as Archbishop of Cashel or
Armagh. Creagh departed from Limerick in August 1562 and arrived at Rome
in January 1563, after surviving the perils of pirates, Moors and storms.
Richard hoped that he would be allowed to enter the order of the Theatines in
Italy, but he was ordered to await papal instructions. While resident in Rome
on a subsidy from the pope, he befriended Thomas Goldwell, the exiled Bishop of
St Asaph, and took an interest in the closing session of the Council of Trent.
In 1564 he was formally proposed and consecrated as Archbishop of Armagh and
primate of Ireland. He set out on the journey northwards, passing through
Venice, Innsbruck and Augsburg, where he met Peter Canisius, the famed
theologian. In the Low Countries he was joined by an English Jesuit,
William Good, and together they sailed from Antwerp on 18 October 1564.
Rendering onto Caesar
There is no doubt that Creagh
believed that he could serve both the Roman church and the crown in Ireland. On
several occasions under interrogation later, the archbishop professed his steadfast
loyalty to Queen Elizabeth. He said that he was ‘from youth brought up to serve
the crown of England as of nature and duty I was bound, knowing and also
declaring in diverse places the joyful life that Irishmen have under England’.
Before his second sortie into his
diocese in 1566 he wrote a letter to the Earl of Leicester, professing his
intention to perform religious tasks only and to render to Caesar that which
was Caesar’s.
He was conscious that in opting for Armagh rather than Cashel in his native
Munster he had consigned himself to conditions of ‘barbarous wildness, cruelty
and ferocity’, but he saw himself as an agent of social and religious reform in
Gaelic Ulster. Ominously, Shane O’Neill, the paramount chieftain of central
Ulster, believed that Creagh had not used his ‘devoir’ in Rome to obtain the
bishopric of Down and Connor for O’Neill’s own brother, and through his agents
Shane had lobbied for the primacy to be conferred on his foster brother,
Terence O’Donnelly.
Creagh hoped, however, that he could make O’Neill
serviceable to the crown and that the resources of the church in Armagh might
be more readily disgorged to a papally appointed archbishop than to a state
nominated one.
His plans went badly awry, certainly on that first journey in the autumn of
1564. Instead of landing in Ireland, Creagh’s ship was driven by adverse winds
to Dover. Separated from his travelling companion, Good, who made his own way
to Ireland, Creagh journeyed to London and thence to the west coast to sail to Ireland.
While awaiting suitable conditions, Creagh was arrested on suspicion of theft
of the foreign coins in his possession. Explaining that he had spent ‘a piece
of time in merchandise’, he was released, but he had barely set foot in his
province when he was again captured while saying Mass in a monastery.
He was
imprisoned for three weeks in Dublin Castle and questioned about his
ecclesiastical warrant. He was dispatched to London in chains with his letters
of credence. During his imprisonment in the Tower of London in the spring
of 1565 he was interrogated three times, twice by Sir William Cecil. The
questioning centred on his contacts in Rome, Louvain and Ireland. In all of his
answers Creagh stressed the transparency of his motives and actions.
Miraculous escape
This phase of captivity came to a
sudden end when Richard Creagh escaped from the Tower on Low Sunday, 1565. For
three days previously, as he later recounted, there were various portents of
his impending flight. Eventually impelled to the door of his cell, he found it
unlocked and walked through at least seven other doors which yielded to him.
The guards at the gate half-heartedly challenged him and out he walked onto the
streets of London. He managed to get a passage to Flanders despite the reward
of £100 sterling on offer for his recapture. A search of his ship revealed the
passenger as a fair-haired, French-speaking merchant, and not a white headed
bishop, the object of pursuit.
Creagh’s liberation was greeted joyfully by his friends in Rome and Flanders.
His emblematic status as escapee coupled with his own strengthened sense of
purpose rendered him an important figurehead of the early Counter-Reformation.
He stayed at Louvain for several months, corresponding with leading members of
the curia and the Society of Jesus. In response to an appeal for funds, he was
granted some subsidies by the Vatican. It became clear that the Roman
authorities wished him to resume his Irish mission.
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| Louvan Cathedral Belgium in 1919 badly damaged in the Wars. |
Copies of documents and
letters, captured in 1565, were to be taken to Ireland by Miler Magrath, newly
appointed as Bishop of Down and Connor, and a relative of Shane O’Neill who had
the confidence of the Roman officials. By April 1566 Creagh was in Madrid where
he briefed Philip II on his mission. He also attempted to assure his position
by writing to the Earl of Leicester at the English court, telling of his desire
to eschew political activity in Ulster.
Poisoned
En route to Ireland, the crew of
the ship Creagh had chartered in Spain tried to poison him in the Bay of
Biscay, assuming him to be a wealthy traveler. Left for dead by them at
Blavet, near Nantes, he recovered and proceeded on his journey, arriving
in the north of Ireland by high summer 1566. In late August he conferred with
Shane O’Neill at Inishdarell in Armagh in the company of Miler Magrath and
Turlough Luineach O’Neill. Purporting to accept his appointment to the primacy,
O’Neill demanded to know whether the archbishop would go on an embassy abroad
for him, which Creagh refused. Shane then asked Creagh to preach to his
soldiers on the following Sunday but the outcome was that Shane ‘rose up and in
a very rage did swear or affirm to destroy the cathedral church of Armagh’,
which he did within five days. The O’Neills were used to dominating the see of Armagh
‘inter Hibernicos’ and had obtruded upon ecclesiastical lands over several
generations. Shane’s plans for aggrandisement in the region were obstructed by
the very presence in Armagh of (in his eyes) an old Englishman instead of a
Gaelic ally, such as Terence O’Donnelly.
Creagh attempted to convoke the Catholic bishops and clergy of his province to
promulgate the decrees of the Council of Trent. But his mission was not aided
by Shane’s accusation of heresy (backed by Miler Magrath) against the archbishop
who seemed to side with the English. Creagh felt threatened by Shane’s
behaviour, reporting that O’Neill claimed that ‘there was none living that he
hated more than the queen of England and our primate, meaning my poor body’. It
was against this background of rapidly deteriorating relations that Creagh sent
a letter to Lord Deputy Sidney at Christmas 1566 in which he offered to mediate
between Shane and the governor. He also asked Sidney whether Catholic services
could be held in churches in Ulster in order to prevent their being despoiled
by O’Neill. Instead of replying Sidney enclosed the archbishop’s letter in
correspondence of his own to the privy council in London.
Capture, escape, recapture
Becoming dispirited by his
failure to establish his ecclesiastical independence within the O’Neill sphere
of influence, Creagh decided to withdraw for a sojourn among his Limerick
relatives. In the company of his brother and the papal emissary, David Wolfe,
Creagh journeyed from Ulster into Connacht through Sligo.
King Philip II of Spain-Creagh
was the subject of anxious enquiries from him. (Philip II of Spain c. 1580, National Portrait Gallery, London)
While passing with a party of friars near Kinelea castle, County Galway,
he was recognised and captured by
Roger O’Shaughnessy, the local magnate, on 27 April 1567 and sent to Dublin.
Creagh staged another escape, this time with his keepers from Dublin castle,
but was recaptured by Meiler Hussey, the steward of the Earl of Kildare.
Hussey renounced a proffered reward of £40, implicating his abettors in a
conspiracy to win a bounty from Spain for the emancipation of one who was
‘counted a very holy man throughout Ireland’.
By late 1567 Creagh was lodged once more in the Tower of London, being
interrogated very closely about his alleged traitorous relations with Shane
O’Neill who had been killed the previous June. The conditions of his
incarceration in fetters were reported as being particularly harsh, and Philip
II instructed his London ambassador to protest to Queen Elizabeth about his
treatment, writing that ‘I am sorry for the trouble that they have given the
Archbishop of Armagh as I look upon him as a good servant of God’.
The queen rejected pleas for
clemency, saying that the prisoner was ‘a traitor and a rebel’. In March 1570
he was sent back to Ireland to stand trial on charges of high treason and
praemunire for upholding the pope’s authority in Ireland.
Found not guilty
It appears that Creagh was tried
before the chief justice, Sir John Plunket, and a local jury. The indictment
for high treason included the charge that he had met with Shane O’Neill on 15
December 1566 at Lifford to conspire against the crown. Defending himself at
his trial, Creagh roundly denied all the allegations, declaring that he was a
Catholic bishop and not engaged in any political activity. Eventually the
jurors returned a verdict of not guilty and were all imprisoned and fined
heavily by the court of castle chamber.
Creagh was detained in chains in Dublin castle for nearly five years. According
to observers, the archbishop had an influential role in explaining ‘the true
service of God to many of the citizens who until then did hold it for no
offence to go to church and learn the common prayer. But he told them that no
man can serve two masters’. In 1575 Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam wrote to Sir
Francis Walsingham that Creagh ‘hindreth the Archbishop of Dublin’s [Loftus’s]
godly endeavour to promote religion which hath inforced him to be importunate
to me to send him away’.
The English privy council used its police powers
of remand to bring Richard Creagh back to the Tower of London.
By now Richard Creagh’s weakened physical state was compounded of many
ailments, including the loss of the use of one of his legs from iron shackling.
His plea to the privy council for release into exile ‘to live quietly and
peaceably’, avoiding anything that would tend ‘to the disturbance of her
majesty’s quiet government’, was turned down, but the conditions of his
captivity were gradually eased. The Elizabethan regime, conscious of the
support and sympathy for Creagh on the part of Irish law students in London,
deemed it safer to confine him rather than release him to be a focus for
politico-religious disaffection in Ireland.
Nevertheless Archbishop Creagh became emblematic of Catholic dissent in the
Tower and outside. A network of sympathisers in Ireland, England and on the
continent contributed materially to the alleviation of his prison predicament.
Creagh appears to have maintained continuous correspondence with contacts in
Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. His cause was not aided, however, by
the discovery by the privy councillors of a well intentioned but quixotic
mission of Patrick Sedgrave to Rome in 1575 to endeavour to procure his release.
Allegations of sexual abuse
The Elizabethan government, faced
with the dilemma of Creagh’s burgeoning reputation as a prisoner of conscience,
attempted in 1577 to destroy him with an imputation of serious
‘villainy’. He was charged with having sexually abused the young daughter
of one his keepers, Humphrey Bowlande. The complaint was investigated by a
commission established by the privy council but the results were inconclusive.
The Spanish ambassador reported the refutation of the ‘false charges’ in the
spring of 1578. Creagh’s Catholic biographers were in no doubt that the
archbishop’s vindication on the fabricated charge was a defining moment in his
ordeal at the hands of his persecutors. Indeed they retell the story of how the
girl, when confronted with her alleged abuser and asked to accuse him,
exclaimed that she had never seen a holier man in her life.
During periods of political turbulence in Ireland Richard Creagh was subjected
to most rigourous interrogation. At the end of the 1560s, for example, he was
questioned in connection with the revolt of James Fitzmaurice in Munster.
Creagh’s name had been invoked in an embassy to Philip II, proposing a transfer
of Ireland to Spanish sovereignty. And the king’s ambassador in London reported
that the archbishop was pressing on him the urgency of Spanish intervention in
Ireland.
Again in the late 1570s his case was being reviewed more pressingly as
Fitzmaurice’s return from Europe initiated the second Desmond revolt. Creagh’s
connections with the king of Portugal through the agency of Antonio Fogaza, a
Portuguese dwelling in London, occasioned a fresh round of investigations of
the primate, his keepers and abettors in the city. The tenor of the letters to
Portugal was non-political in that Creagh importuned the authorities there to
intercede with Queen Elizabeth on behalf of the prisoners of conscience in
London and elsewhere. It seems that his very presence in jail rendered him a
focus for conspiracy though there is no evidence of his participation in
anti-government plotting. Throughout the years of captivity he constantly
proclaimed his ‘bounden duty to my natural prince [Elizabeth] and my country’.
Prisoner ‘only for papistry’
In the final phase of his life
Creagh managed to maintain his Olympian detachment, emerging as a confessorial
figure among the Tower prisoners, debating issues of theology and strengthening
the faith of correspondents. That he was regarded by the early 1580s as a
prisoner ‘only for papistry’ was admitted in the reports of the Tower’s
lieutenant. At one stage the authorities in the gaol put Creagh to the test by
compelling him to attend a Protestant sermon. He was physically dragged to the
chapel, held down while a divine preached against Rome and drowned out when he
tried to take the preacher to task. He was referred to in the bills addressed
by the lieutenant to the privy council annually as the chief prisoner for whom
food and light had to be provided, the cost of keeping him down to 1586
mounting to £667 13s 4d. Yet releasing him to a triumphant homecoming in
Ireland where recusancy was becoming more open and widespread was too alarming
to contemplate.
Ominously the prison list of late 1586 categorised together Creagh and one
Robert Poley. The latter had acted as agent provocateur of Sir Francis
Walsingham in the Babington plot against Queen Elizabeth, urging the
conspirators on and helping to entrap Mary, Queen of Scots. To preserve
Walsingham’s cover Poley was imprisoned with the plotters in the Tower. It was
he who administered a portion of poisoned cheese to the archbishop, according
to Creagh’s biographers, the poisoning being discovered too late by his fellow
prisoners for his life to be saved.
A physician who examined a urine
sample smuggled out of the Tower by Creagh’s friends detected the poison and
threw an antidote potion over the prison wall but it was not efficacious. He
died in December 1586, aged sixty-three. It is possible that Creagh was quietly
sacrificed as the grander design of the destruction of Mary, Queen of Scots,
was being effected. An alternative symbol of Catholic defiance was removed
before the queen’s execution in February 1587.
Creagh’s legacy
It may have taken some time for
news of his death to have been made public in Ireland. By 1590, however, the
process of his inclusion by Catholic writers on the roll of martyrs for their
religion was well under way. In popular memory, his sanctity lived on. Locals
treated the spot where he was captured by O’Shaughnessy in 1567 as unhallowed,
and testified to its barrenness and unfruitfulness for long afterwards.
His
early biographers had no doubts about his sanctity and they also stressed his
role as a pioneer of Roman Catholic education both as teacher and visionary of
third-level training for Irish youth. Despite his short ministry as
archbishop, Creagh vigourously promoted Tridentine norms among the Irish clergy
and laity. While rejecting any compromise with Protestantism, he remained
professedly loyal to the English crown. As a scholar perhaps his major
contribution lay in the first scientific treatment of the Irish language, and
his use of it as a tool of instruction in his catechism of 1560.
He was
above all a champion of the rights of the Roman Catholic church in Ireland
against all obtruders, whether in the form of crown officials, ill-disciplined
clergy or intrusive Irish magnates such as Shane O’Neill. It was not surprising
therefore that he was reckoned to be ‘a dangerous man to be among the Irish’.
Colm Lennon is a Senior Lecturer
in the Department of Modern History, NUI, Maynooth.
Further reading:
C. Lennon, An Irish prisoner of
conscience of the Tudor era: Archbishop Richard Creagh of Armagh, 1523-86
(Dublin 2000).
W.P. O’Brien, ‘Two Munster
primates: Donnchadh Ó Taidhg (1560-2) and Richard Creagh (1564-85)’, Seanchas
Ard Mhaca, xiv (1990).
'
Quite fascinating, and another
The Last Years of Archbishop Creagh of Armagh.
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| Old Image of the Jesuit School in Limerick |
By W. H. Grattan Flood.
[From The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 4th Series, Vol. XXVI, No. 501,
September 1909]
ALTHOUGH Cardinal Moran, in his Spicilegium Ossoriense, added
considerably to our knowledge of the life of Archbishop Creagh, yet recent
research has brought to light many additional facts in connecion with the
glorious confessor's last years. One thing is certain: the generally received date
for Primate Creagh's death is incorrect.
All authorities, including Stuart's Armagh,
so capably edited by Father Ambrose Coleman, O.P., agree in fixing the
Primate's death as occurring on October 14, 1585. The Cardinal Archbishop of
Sydney in his memoir of Creagh, prefixed to Rothe's Analecta, writes as
follows: 'The last reference to the imprisoned Primate that I have met with in
the State Papers is dated the 27th of May, 1585.' Father Coleman adds: 'On
October 14th of the same year he was dead.
It was generally believed at the
time that he had been put to death by poison.' Bishop Rothe, in 1619, is
responsible for the date usually given. His words are: 'Evaserat e turri anno
Domini 1565, et plusculis annis interpositis reductus in eundem carcerem e
vita migravit 14 Octobris, anno 1585.' As I shall prove later on,
the Primate did not die in October, 1585, nor yet in October, 1586-even
assuming an error in the year-and he was certainly alive on December eve, 1586.
But before bringing forward the new facts dealing with the last years of the
saintly Primate, it will be well to trace very briefly the career of Archbishop
Creagh, whose episcopate has been ably described by Rothe, Copinger, Mullan,
O'Sullivan, Howling and Cardinal Moran.
Richard Creagh, the son of a wealthy merchant of Limerick, was born circa
1522, and for a time pursued a mercantile career, but, by a special dispensation of
Providence was urged to adopt the ecclesiastical state, and, having studied at
the University of Louvain, was ordained priest in 1555. His career at Louvain
was particularly brilliant, and he graduated Bachelor of Theology in 1555,
returning to Limerick in 1556.
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| His school in 2014 |
From Lynch's MS. History it appears that Dr.
Creagh opened a classical school in the dissolved Dominican Friary in his
native city, where he taught with conspicuous success for two years, from 1560
to 1562. It is well to note that James FitzJohn, 14th Earl of Desmond, had
given up the Dominican Friary to the Friars Preachers in 1554, and it remained
in their possession till 1560.
This earl died at Askeaton, October 14, 1558,
and was succeeded by his son Gerald, under whom, in 1562, the Priory became
forfeited to the Crown. In August of the same year Dr. Creagh went to Rome.
On the death of Primate O'Tighe, in December, 1562, Father David Wolfe,
S.J., Papal Nuncio, recommended his townsman, Dr. Creagh, for the see of
Armagh. Accordingly, on Low Sunday, 1564, we find him consecrated Archbishop,
and he received the pallium on May 12. Not many months later he set out for
Ireland, and he landed in his native country in December of the same year.
Meantime, on November 18, 1563, Seaghan O'Neill, Prince of Ulster, gave over
the Cathedral of Armagh to the Dean, Turlogh O'Donnelly, who had been
recommended by Queen Elizabeth as Archbishop.
Immediately after his consecration, and while still in Rome, Primate Creagh,
knowing the vast amount of good to be gained from well-equipped colleges,
petitioned the Holy See to grant a charter for the foundation of an Irish
Catholic University, with constituent colleges, after the model of Paris and
Louvain, and to place it under the control of the Jesuit Fathers.
The Pope
acceded to his request, and issued a Brief, dated May 31, 1564, for the
erection of a University in Ireland. During his stay on the Continent,
Archbishop Creagh formed a friendship with many Jesuits, and he fortunately
succeeded in securing the services of Father William Good, S.J., to accompany
him to Ireland, with a view of becoming Rector of the proposed Catholic
University. Father Good was admirably fitted for the position, as he had been
Head Master of Wells Grammar School, under Queen Mary, and held a prebend in
Wells Cathedral, but had to fly, in 1562, under Elizabeth, becoming a Jesuit at
Tournai ere the close of the same year.
At Dover, early in October, 1564,
Primate Creagh and Father Good separated, and, strange to say, never met again. The Archbishop proceeded to London, and thence to Chester. He then took
shipping for Ireland, and landed there on December 19.
No sooner was the Primate landed than spies were on his track, and he was
arrested a couple of days before Christmas, just after celebrating Mass near
Drogheda. He was then sent in chains to London, where he was examined on
February 22, 1565, by Cecil, Elizabeth's minister, and again on March 17 by the
Recorder of London. Some weeks later, on April 29 1565, the Primate escaped-owing to miraculous intervention, as he himself
believed-from the Tower, and fled to his Alma Mater, Louvain, where he
was joyfully received. After a short sojourn there he went to Spain, and thence
returned to Ireland in July, 1566.
 He preached before O'Neill and O'Donnell in
Armagh Cathedral on the Feast of the Assumption, and impressed on the Ulster
princes the desirability of making peace with the English. But, as the Lord
Deputy wanted to make the cathedral an arsenal, Prince O'Neill burned it sooner
than allow the temple of God to be so desecrated. On Christmas Day the Primate
wrote to the Lord Deputy (Sir Henry Sydney), asking for permission to exercise
his ministry, and mentions that Seaghan O'Neill had burned Armagh Cathedral
'for safeguard of his country.'
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| The front of St. Nicholas' Cathedral in Armagh |
In the spring of the year 1567 the Primate visited his native city, and
preached before the Lord Deputy in St. Mary's Cathedral on April 1. However, on
the last day of April he was arrested in Connacht by Dermot reagh O'Shaughnessy,
in Kinelea, whither he had journeyed to minister to the needs of the diocese of
Kilmacduagh. The miserable man O'Shaughnessy was rewarded for his perfidy by an
autograph letter from Elizabeth herself and by the grant of ill-gotten property
in Gort
A packed Dublin jury-to their credit be it said- refused to find the
Archbishop guilty, and, after being confined for over six months in Dublin
Castle, the good Primate escaped through the connivance of the jailer. However,
ere the close of October, 1567, the Primate was a third time arrested, being
given up by Moelmuire (Meyler or Melchior) Hussey, a retainer of the Earl of
Kildare. This man Hussey was actuated by a desire to obtain the proffered
reward of £40, but his master, the Earl of Kildare, made a stipulation that the
Primate's life should be spared, which promise was solemnly agreed to, 'on his
honour,' by the Lord Deputy Sydney. Of course, Sydney's 'honour' was not of
much account, but the Government could not easily afford to offend the powerful
Gerald, 11th Earl of Kildare.
Sydney sailed for England on October 21, and the
Primate was lodged in the Tower of London on November 6, as we learn from the
Spanish Calendar of State Papers. On December 22, Meyler Hussey wrote to the
Privy Council to spare the life of Archbishop Creagh, and he refused to accept
the £40 which had been offered by Sydney. The Primate was examined on the same
day, and was re-examined on January 8, 1568. It is worthy of note that though
the real crime with which the Archbishop was charged was 'his maintaining the
Pope's authority,' yet the interrogatories were all framed with a view merely
to his indictment for being associated with Seaghan O'Neill.
Father David
Wolfe, S.J., who had been imprisoned with the Primate in Dublin Castle in 1567,
was allowed to languish in a foul cell for five years. In September of that
year he wrote an interesting letter which was discovered by Brother Foley,
S.J., and is published in Rev. Dr. Hogan's Hibernia Ignatiana, from
which it appears that Bishop Leverons of Kildare visited the cells and 'found
the stench so intolerable that he was obliged to go away without transacting
any business.' Father Wolfe states that the Primate was 'kept in irons in an
underground, dark, and horrible prison, where no one is allowed to speak to
him or to see him except his keeper. He has many sores on his body, and,
although not over forty years of age, has lost all his teeth.'
Many efforts
were made to effect Father Wolfe's release, and even the Sovereign Pontiff, St.
Pius the Fifth, wrote to the Nuncio at Madrid, on March 13, 1568, to request
the King of Spain to ask the Spanish Ambassador in London to obtain his
liberation, as also that of the Primate. Yet it was only in September, 1573,
that he escaped from his loathsome prison, and he sought refuge in Spain,
returning, however, in May, 1574.
All previous writers, including Cardinal Moran and Father Coleman, seem to
imagine that Archbishop Creagh was detained in the Tower of London from 1567
until his death, although the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney says that the
Primate 'appears to have been transferred for a while to custody in Dublin,
but he was soon again consigned a prisoner to the London Tower.' We now
know from the Spanish Calendar of State Papers, under date of March 27, 1570,
that Dr. Creagh some days previously had been 'released on bail,' and
had returned to Ireland. Thus from March, 1570, to May, 1574-over four
years-the saintly Primate laboured in his native country, although the
particulars of his career during that time are not on record.
The Spanish Calendar bears out the Primate's own statement as to his
confinement in the pestiferous underground cell of the Tower known as Alesboure (also written Halesboure and Whalesboure), described by Cardinal Allen as
'the grisly dungeon called Whalesboure,'. supposed by Dom Bede Camm to be the
now destroyed Cole-harbour Tower. We learn that the Spanish Ambassador, in
reply to the letters sent him by the Papal Nuncio at Madrid, had urged Queen
Elizabeth 'to be more merciful to the Archbishop of Armagh, taking off his
chains;' but her only answer was that 'she had made inquiries,' and that
Creagh 'was a traitor and a rebel.'
These irons had deprived the Primate of the
use of one of his legs, and the letter of the Spanish Ambassador (Guzman de
Silva) to King Philip, dated July 17, 1568, is an interesting corroboration of
previous accounts.
It is not unlikely that the Primate on returning to Ireland in March, 1570,
joined in the project for the revival of the St. Patrick's University, founded
by Clement V, and confirmed by Pope John XXII. This project was planned by Sir
Henry Sydney, Viceroy of Ireland, and James Stanihurst, Speaker of the Irish
House of Commons, and it was intended to make Blessed Edmund Campion, S.J.,
then the tutor of Richard Stanihurst. in Dublin, the Rector.
But the
proclamation of the Bull of St. Pius V against Elizabeth, and the strong
Protestant opposition to the idea of a University, put an end to the project.
The Bill was introduced on March 12, 1570, but owing to Cecil's strong
opposition-probably distrustful of Campion-it was rejected by the Colonial
Parliament on December 12, even though Sydney offered a large annual grant from
his own estate in aid of the endowment of the Irish University.
As is well known, Blessed Edmund Campion left Drogheda on May 1, 1571; but it
is remarkable that he set sail from that port disguised as 'Mr. Patrick,' a
servant of 'Melchior ' Hussey, steward to the Earl of Kildare. This was the
same man Hussey who had repented and foregone his reward for the arrest of
Archbishop Creagh. Sydney himself sailed for England on March 25, and was
replaced by Fitzwilliam. Owing to the very disturbed state of the province of
Armagh, it is probable that the Primate spent the years 1572-1574 in the county
of Limerick, in company with Father David Wolfe, S.J.
An agreeable incident of
this period is the reconciling to the ancient faith of William Casey,
Protestant Bishop of Limerick, who had been schismatically consecrated under Edward
VI. Rev. Dr. Hogan, S.J., dates this incident as occurring in 1572, before
Father Wolfe went to Spain but it must be at least a year later, for we find
letters from Casey as Protestant Bishop of Limerick on November 18, 1573. The
correct date is in June, 1574, when Wolfe had returned to Ireland. It is also
well to note that on April 13,1575, the Pope empowered Bishop O'Gallagher of
Derry to act as his Vice-Primate.
Cardinal Moran quotes a letter from the State Papers written by Primate
Creagh as of the year 1574; but this is an error, as his Eminence was deceived
by the official copy of the letter which was wrongly placed in the Calendar under
December, 1574.
Internal evidence would suffice to show that the letter cannot
date earlier than March, 1575, but official documents give more detailed
information. From the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, under
date of May 17, 1574, it is certain that the Primate was arrested and brought a
prisoner to Dublin Castle, where he was detained till the end of February in
the following year. Yet, though a prisoner, he was able to transact a good deal
of business; and his undeniable reputation of sanctity did incalculable good in
bringing back many temporizing Catholics to the ancient faith.
At length, on
February 14, 1575, Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam wrote a strong letter to Walsingham,
urging him to send an order to have 'one Creagh, a Romish thing,' brought
back to the Tower, inasmuch as the Primate 'wonderfully unfitteth the people,
and hinderth the Archbishop [Loftus] of Dublin's godly endeavours to promote
religion, which hath enforced to be importunate unto me for the sending of him
away.' Though the State Papers give no clue as to the result of Fitzwilliam's
appeal, we are fortunately enabled to fix the date of the Archbishop's transfer
to the Tower from an entry in the Hatfield Papers,7
as occurring on March 4, 1575.
Full details as to the Primate's life in the Tower from 1575 to 1585 will be
found in Rothe's Analecta, by Cardinal Moran, including the glorious
confessor's many examinations and petitions and professions of loyalty to the
Crown.
It must be added, however, that Archbishop Creagh was enabled to afford spiritual
consolation to the English prelates confined in the Tower, and also to some of
the English martyrs, including Archbishop Heath, of York, who died in the Tower
on December 8, 1578. Seven years later the Lords of the Council ordered 'that
the Primate should remain in prison,' as he was 'a dangerous man to be among
the Irish, for the reverence that is by that nation borne unto him.'
It only remains to correct the generally received date for the death of the
Primate, namely, October 14, 1585. The Tower Bills leave no room for doubt. For Christmas, 1585, we find among 'the demands of
Owen Hopton, Knight,' Lieutenant of the Tower, 'the sum of £8 13s. 4d.'
for 'the diet and charges of Richard Creagh, beginning the 29th of September
and ending the 27th of December following, being thirteen weeks, at 13s. 4d.
the week.' Also, 'one keeper, at 5s. the week-£3 5s.'; likewise, 'fuel
and candle, at 4d. the week-£2 12s.'
Precisely similar bills are on
record for Lady Day, 1586, Midsummer, 1586, and Michaelmas, 1586, which go to
prove that the Primate was living in the Tower on the 30th of September, 1586.
Unfortunately, the Tower Bills for Christmas, 1586, are missing; but the Acts
of the Privy Council go to prove that the Primate was alive for at least two
months after Michaelmas. It may be noted that the Tower Bills do not contain
the name of the Venerable Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who was a prisoner in
the Tower from 1585-1595; and who, doubtless, must have received spiritual
consolation from Archbishop Creagh; but this is explained by the fact that
Queen Elizabeth compelled men of means to pay for themselves.
From the Report of Sir Francis Walsingham of the resolutions of the Privy Council, held on November 30, 1586, we learn
that it was ordered that 'Creagh be continued in the Tower.' This is the
very last official reference to the Primate, and we can fairly assume that he
died early in December of that year.
Rothe, in his Analecta, tells us
that the Archbishop's end was hastened by poison administered to him by a
warder of the Tower named Culligy-a fact attested by 'a Catholic doctor named Arclow'
This doctor was the famous physician, Dr. Edward Astlow, a Fellow of New
College, Oxford, who had been ejected as a 'recusant,' and had been a prisoner
in the Tower from 1574 to 1575.
The Primate, learning of this, was perfectly resigned, and fortunately he was
able to avail of the ministrations of Father William Creighton, S.J., who was
his fellow-prisoner from September 16, 1584. Fortified by the rites of the
Church, the holy martyr died a glorious death. The fact of his having been
poisoned, in odium fidei, is not wholly derived from Rothe's Analecta,
but is quoted by that distinguished prelate from Stanihurst's letter to
Usher (Brevis Praemonitio: Douay, 1615), in which the learned
Anglo-Irish writer distinctly says that Archbishop Creagh was poisoned in the
Tower of London.
Nor is it at all incredible that the minions of Elizabeth
would poison the venerable Primate, who had languished continuously for
thirteen years in the Tower. Elizabeth herself, after signing the death warrant
of Mary Queen of Scots, on February 1, 1587, wrote to Sir Amyas Paulet,
expressing her displeasure 'that he had not found out some way to shorten the
life of his prisoner.' It is certain that Elizabeth was a party to the
assassination of Seaghan O'Neill, and she undoubtedly gave her sanction to, and
even conferred rewards on, the murderers of Irish chieftains, bishops, and
priests.
Father Creighton, S.J., who attended the Primate in his last hours,
was in Paris towards the end of May, 1587, and started for Rome on June 1; and
he doubtless conveyed the details of the Primate's death to the Holy See. I
shall merely add that Redmond O'Gallagher, Bishop of Derry, was Vice-Primate
from 1575 to July 1, 1587, when Edmund Magauran, Bishop of Ardagh (who was then
in Rome), was translated to the primatial see, as successor of the martyr,
Richard Creagh.
W. H. Grattan Flood
Irish Catholic Martyrs were dozens of people who have
been sanctified in varying degrees for dying for their Roman Catholic faith between 1537 and 1714 in
Ireland. Richard Creagh is one of them.
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| Limerick Castle and the River Shannon |
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