Life
1806-1902 [William Dool Killen]; b. Ballymena, Co. Antrim; ed. Belfast
Academical Inst.; ord. Presbyterian minister, Raphoe, Co. Donegal, 1829;
Prof. Church History, Presbyterian College, Belfast, during forty-eight
years; President of Presbyterian College, 1869; hon. doctorates from Univ.
of Glasgow; Reminiscences of a Long Life (1901); The Ecclesiastical
History of Ireland, 2 vols; and History of the Presbyterian Church
in Ireland, 3 vols., commenced by James Seaton Reid. DUB
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Works
[ed.] Rev. John Mackenzie, [Memorials of] The Siege of Derry: an edition of his writings including his Narrative and its
vindication [i.e., Champion Foyl’d], with intro. and notes
by W. D. Killen (Belfast 1861). Killen was a successor to his ministry
in Cookstown.
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Commentary
Terence Brown, The Whole Protestant Community: The Making of a Historical
Myth [Field Day Pamphlets, No. 7] (Derry: Field Day 1985), p.13 [ftn.4]:
In the nineteenth-century W. D. Killen, who completed J. S. Reid’s
monumental History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (1833
& 1867) attempted to prove that presbyterians had palyed only a small
part in the Rebellion.’ Brown notes that John M. Barklay (challenge
and Conflict: Essays in Irish Presbyterian History and Doctrine, Antrim
1981) acceptes J. B. Woodburn’s view (Ulster Scot, 1914) that they
were considerably implicated in what Killen had termed “the revolutionary
mania”.
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References
Belfast Public Library holds, History of Presbyterian Congregations
in Ireland (1886); Memorials of the Siege of Derry (1861); Reminiscences of a Long Life (1901) [autob]; Why Should Prelacy
Dominate in Ireland (1868).
Notes
Killen’s Ecclesiastical History is much cited in Anthony Alcock, Understanding Ulster (Lurgan: Ulster Society [Northern Whig: ]
1994).
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