Life
[?]-1798 [vars. O’Coigly; Quigley]; ord. 1785, Armagh; spent several
years in Paris; returned to Armagh diocese; associated with Defenders
and United Irishmen and was active in promoting friendly relations with
Presbyterians of Antrim and Down, 1791-93; travelled to Britain and Paris,
where he was involved with the United Britons and with Tandy; arrested
Margate, Feb. 1798, preparing to cross to France with Arthur O’Connor
and Benjamin Binns; executed by hanging, Pennington Heath.
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Works
Daire Keogh, A Patriot Priest: A Life of Reverend James Coigly (Cork
UP 1998), 96pp.; note undated Life, infra. BIBL, Denis Carroll, Unusual Suspects: Twelve Radical Clergymen (Dublin: Columba Press
1998); also Réamoinn Ó Muirí, study of Fr. Coigly
in Liam Swords, ed., Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter: The Clergy
and 1798 (Columba Press 1997).
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Commentary
Kevin Whelan, ‘Origins of the Orange Order’, in Bullán:
An Irish Studies Journal, 2, 2 (Spring/Summer 1996), pp.19-36: refers
to James Quigley’s account, in Life [n.d.], of how he tried
‘to reconcile the parties’ in Armagh ‘but was discourse
by several leading gentlemen of the county who have often told me at their
tables that it was of great utility to the Irish government that such
religious disputes should exist between Dissenters and Catholics’;
further describes the Orange Order as ‘Church and king’ mob
deliberately created to ‘break the Catholic/Presbyterian alliance
which it was much feared might end up on a union of all parties against
the said Beresford and co.’ (Life, p.14; Whelan, p.31.) QRY:
is the is the same, and if so, when was the Life written?
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References
Not cited in Dictionary of National Biography.
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