[Archbishop] William King (1650-1729) Life
[ top ] Works
[ top ]
[ top ] Criticism
[ top ] Commentary William Hamilton, Letters Concerning the Northern Coast of the County of Antrim in Ireland (1786), cites William King, who relates that the military wasting of Connaught by Tyrone on the way to Kinsale made a bog of ploughed land, and argues that that since want of industry has in our remembrance made one bog, no wonder if a country famous for laziness, as Ireland now is, abound with them (p.41; copy in Library of Herbert Bell.)
Frank OConnor, The Backward Look (1967), quotes extensively from exchanges between King and Swift, incl. Kings reply to a snub from Swift: As to the first thing, that it is impossible for the two Kingdoms to proceed long upon a different scheme of politicks I believe it is true, but withal I think it impossible to set the two parties on the same foot in Ireland as in England, for our division is founded on the right of our Estates which are all claimed by the forfeiters and nothing can restore them but the Pretender nor any thing take them from us but bringing him in, whereas all your contests so farr as I understand them have no other foundation, but who shall have the ministry and employments the gaining these has no connexion with the Pretender, you may have them without him or under him. But you see the case is widely different with us and here is the true source of the zeal and violence of the Protestants of Ireland. Remove the fear of the Pretender, and you may lead them life a dog on a string. (Harold Williams, ed., Swifts Letters, II, 3, Oxford 1963.) Also quotes Swift to Pope 9 years later: I ought to let you know that the Thing we call a Whig in England is a creature altogether different from those of the same denomination here [...]
[ top ] A. N. Jeffares (Anglo-Irish Literature, 1982); lively attack on Tyrconnell entitled State of the Protestants &c.; also a vigorous assertion of a particular Irish point of view; seen best in his letters, as with Swift; strong views about Church of Irelands role but more politic than to express them; quotes letter to William Smyth about marriage to sweet-tempered girl of very good sense, advising him to measure what displeases him in her since the things which cause coldness between married people are commonly trifles, and to let her know in the softest and most pleasant interval [i.e. after] what has displeased him; Irish claims should count most in Irish appointments; uneasy relationship with Swift based on common loyalty to the Protestant Church in Ireland [24-5]; The Shamrock, poem attributed to King, Mountown! thou sweet retreat from Dublin cares,/Be famous long for Apples and for Pears;/For Turnips,. Carrots, Lettuces, and Peas,/For Peggys Butter and for Peggys Cheese/May fat geese gaggle round thy crammd Barn Door ... &c [52].
Maureen Wall, Catholic Ireland in the 18th c., ed. Gerard OBrien (1989), Archbishop King, an enthusiastic supporter of the enforcement of the [penal] laws, had to confess in 1720, I find the papists with their mobs and insolence too hard for all our laws. [24] Archbishop King, in 1718, I may further observe that the papists being made incapable to purchase lands, have turned themselves to trade, and already have engrossed almost all the trade of the kingdom. (Letter to Archb. of Canterbury, 6 Feb.; in A Great Archbishop of Dublin, William King DD, ed. Sir CS King, p.208.) [idem, 80] Wall later comments that this was alarmist since Protestants still controlled commerce in Dublin, Derry, and Belfast, if not in Waterford, Cork, Galway and Limerick. [idem, 86] Agrarian disturbances in Munster treated as popish rebellion, ignoring similar troubles from the Steelboys in Ulster; edition of Sir John Temples Irish Rebellion and Archb. Kings State of the Protestants of Ireland printed in Clonmel in 1766 for sectarian reasons. The publishers J and P Bagnells brother played a significant role as a magistrate in the events in Tipperary. [119-20]
[ top ]
Joseph Th. Leerssen (Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael, 1986), writes: Archbishop King of Dublin, a radical not preferred [i.e. raised in office] to Armagh, attacked the English interest in the Church of Ireland (p.356).
Terry Eagleton, Homage to Francis Hutcheson, in Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (London: Verso 1995): In his De Origine Mali (1702), King claims that God has ordained that not everyone can be in a superior position, and that to fall from such a position implies some folly on the part of the agent. This case may not be wholly unconnected with the fact that King was an Ascendancy bishop confronted with a Gaelic population who believed they had been usurped. (p.109, ftn. 12); there is one other passing reference to King in connection with Browne and others (p.50-51.)
[ top ] Joseph Johnston, Bishop Berkeleys Querist in Historical Perspective (Dundalk: Dundalgan Press 1970): The Archbishop was one of those rare high ecclesiastics who did not owe his advancement to having held a chaplaincy to the Lord Lieutenant or being on friendly terms with a Court favourite, male or female. He provides an outstanding example of sterling honesty of Christian character in an age and an environment which was not conducive to the development of such qualities, still less to the advancement of their possessor to high office in Church or State. A stout defender of the Protestant interest and the Hanoverian Succession, he was also a good Irishman who sought the material welfare of all his countrymen and, since he could do little to advance it, exerted himself to the utmost of his power to protect it from injury. [ ; 18] [ ] As a member of the Irish House of Lords, King was one of those few honest Protestants in high places who protested against the proposed violation of the Articles of the Treaty of Limerick, and did all in his power to resist it. If he had succeeded he would have altered the subsequent history of Anglo-Irish relations immeasurably for the better. Writing to the Bishop of Waterford on the 5th October, 1697, he said: As to the matter of the articles of Limerick we were for confirming them, but in the Act presented to that purpose no one article was confirmed; such partially as were presented to be confirmed were changed in the essentials, and the people put in a much worse position than before the confirmation, contrary to the Kings express letters patent. This, we thought, did not consist with his honour, and supposed he had been imposed on by the title, which was specious, for the confirmation of articles made at Limerick, but in earnest was to destroy them contrary to the publick faith. I supposed your Lordship would never have consented to this, the whole mystery being no more than to make a few more forfeitures to gratify courtiers. I am sure persons that believe any obligation on men to keep their words are of our opinion, but alas how few think it necessary. In a subsequent letter, dated October 9th, 1697, addressed to Lord Clifford, he discussed the same matter: The second thing of moment was the bill for confirmation of articles made at the surrender of Limerick. I understand an account of that matter and our protest have been sent to your Lordship. It seemed a little strange that men should endeavour to persuade us his Majesty would not have those articles otherwise confirmed, and at the same time persuade his Majesty that we would not confirm them in any other manner, and we found this to be the case, and we could not reconcile it to the Kings honour or the publick faith if under pretence of confirming articles granted on valuable consideration, [18] we should have consented to an act that broke them, and I verily believe by the tendency I observe constantly in your Lordship to natural justice that you would have been of the same opinion. (pp.17-19.) [Cont.]
James Kelly, ‘The Act of Union: its origin and background’, in Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union, Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001, remarks that William King, bishop of Derry, was among the earliest to maintain that a union would be mutually advantageous, claiming in 1697 that it would enable both kingdoms to flourish effectively. (King to Southwell, 19 July 1697, cited in Moody & Vaughen, eds., A New History of Ireland, Vol. IV: Ireland 1692-1800, OUP 1986, p.7; here p.52.) [ top ] Quotations The State of the Protestants of Ireland (), There is no wordly thing more valuable to Man than Liberty. Many prefer it to life; and few can live long without it. Tis the Darling of our Laws, and there is nothing of which they are more tender. But the Protestants of Ireland from the very beginning of King Jamess Reign, had their Liberties invaded, and at last entirely destroyed. [868; ...]; Upon this account Perjuries became so common, that if a Tenant owed his Protestant landlord his Rent, he paid him by swearing him into a Plot [869; ] very few Country Gentlemen escaped being accused [...] Sir Thomas Hackett, whilst Lord Mayor Dublin, did so many Brutish and barbarous things of this nature, that it were endless to recount them; taking example from the Lord Tyrconnel, who made him Mayor, he treated everybody with Oaths, Curses, ill Names, and barbarous Language [869]; [...] it may be thought that these things were unknown to King James, and therefore are not to be imputed to him, but it is certain that if he did not contrive and order them, he yet consented to them; neither did he seem to have the least resentment or pity for their Sufferings ... [Chap. III, sec. vii; FDA 868-70.] Note that the epithets barbarous and brutish are used repeatedly. Mountown! thou sweet Retreat from Dublin Cares,/Be famous long for Apples and for Pears;/for Turnips, Carrots, Lettuce, Beans and Peas,/For Peggys Butter, and for Peggys cheese [...] And be thy rukies numerous as they Hens. (In Samuel Whyte, ed., Shamrock, 1772, p.5; cited in Russell Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (Phil: Pennsylvania UP 1959), p.54. Of Bogs and Loughs: We live in an island almost infamous for bogs, yet I do not remember anyone has attempted much concerning them. [967; further attributes their prevalence to native want of industry] [Bogs] are a shelter and refuge to tories, and thieves, who can hardly live without them [...] The natives heretofore had [...] some advantage by the woods and bogs; by them they were preserved from the conquest of the English; and I believe it is a little remembrance of this, makes them still build near bogs [...] I know not if it will be worth the observing, that a turf bog preserves things strangely, a corps will lye entire in one for several years [...]. (Of the Bogs and Loughs of Ireland, rep. in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature, 1992, Vol. 1, pp.969-70; quoted in Luke Gibbons, Some Hysterical Hatred: History, Hysteria and the Literary Revival, in Irish University Review, Spring/Summer 1997, p.14, stating the fact that King is cited as an authority by the character Dick Sutherland, and remarking that we find here the most succinct expression of the subversive associations of bogs in the colonial imagination. [p.14]) NOTE that Gibbons citation omits much of the material in the full column on p.969, including remarks as follows: it was an advantage for them to have their country unpassable, and the fewer strangers came near them, they lived the easier; for they had no inns, every house where you came was your inn; and you said no more, but put off your brogues and sat down by the fire; and since the natural Irish hate to mend highways, and will frequently shut them up, and change them (being unwilling strangers should come and burthen them;) Tho they are very inconvenient to us, yet they are of some use; for most of Ireland have their firing from them; turf is accounted a tolerable sweet fire, and we having very impolitickly destroyed our wood, and not as yet found stone coal, save in few places, we could hardly live without bogs: I have seen turf charcd, it serves to work iron [969], and as I have been informed, will serve to make it in a bloomery or iron-work [ ] I know not if it will be worth the observing, that the turf preserves things strangely leather butter trees supposed by the ignorant vulgar to have lain there since the flood (pp.969-70.) Ulster emigration: no papists stir [...] The papists being already 6 to 1, and being a breeding people, you may imagine in what condition we are like to be in. (R. J. Dickson, Ulster Emigration to Colonial America, 1966, p.2). [ top ] References Charles A. Read, The Cabinet of Irish Literature (London, Glasgow, Dublin, Belfast & Edinburgh: Blackie & Son [1876-78]); b. 1 May, Antrim; ed. Dungannon Grammar, from 12; TCD sizar; deacon, 1674; holy order, 1675; chaplain of Archbishop Parker of Tuam, prebend and precentorship of Tuam Cathedral; controversy with Peter Manby, dean of Londonderry, who had gone over to Catholicism, writing An Answer (1687), A Vindication of An Answer (1688); A vindication of the Christian Religion and Reformation [n.d.]; confined in Dublin Castle, 1689; released, and imprisoned again; DD 1689, notwithstanding; bishopric of Derry on retreat of James [i.e., after death of Walker], Jan. 1691; The State of the Protestants in Ireland (1691); opposed Presbyterians in his diocese with A Discourse Concerning The Inventions of Men in the Worship of God (1694); reply by Mr Joseph Boyce answered in An Admonition to the dissenting Inhabitants of the Diocese of Derry (1695), followed by his next retort, A Second Admonition &c.; De Origine Mali (1702), reprinted in London May and June 1703; abridgement in Nouvelles de la Republiques des Lettres, over which arose discussion betwen Bayle and Bernard, and Leibniz [Theodicée, 1710; Monadologie, 1714] wrote three volumes of Remarks opposing the work, though recognising it to be full of elegance and learning; King produced manuscript vindications of points of criticism raised, which he carefully noted; these afterwards placed in hands of Edward Law, who had translated the work into English; incorporated the notes in 2nd ed., as An Essay on the Origin of Evil, by Dr William King, late Lord Archbishop of Dublin; translated from the Latin, with Notes and a Dissertation concerning the Principles and Criterion of Virtue and the Origin of the Passions [...] To which are added Two Sermons by the same Author (1732); 3rd ed. 1739; other eds.; Archbishop of Dublin, 1702; lord-justice of Ireland in 1717, 1721, and 1723; d. 8 May in his palace in Dublin; among minor works, mostly sermons, is Divine Predestination and Foreknowledge consistent with the Freedom of Mans Will (1709), fiercely attacked by John Edwards and Anthony Collins; Swifts high opinion of [no quotation]; Harris speaks glowingly of his private life and wise and liberal administrations; patronage of Ambrose Phillips and Thomas Parnell. Discourse on Predestination preached to text Romans 8.29-30. We ought to remember, that the descriptions which we have framed to ourselves of God, or of the divine attributes, are not taken form any direct or immediate perceptions that we have of him or the; but from some observations we have made of his works, and from the consideration of those qualifications that we conceive would enable us to perform the like. Thus in observing great order, conveniency and harmony in all the several parts of the world, and perceiving that everything is adapted and tends to the preservation an advantage of the whole, we are apt to consider that we could not contrive and settle things in so excellent and proper a manner without great wisdom; and having then ascribed to him wisdom because we see its effects and results of it in his works we proceed and conclude that he has likewise foresight and understanding, because we cannot conceive wisdom without these, and because if we were to do what we see he had done we would not expect to perform it without the exercise of these faculties. From Essay on the Origin of Evil, CAB selects Hunger, thirst, and Labour, A terrestrial animal must, as we have said, necessarily consist of mixed and heterogeneous parts; its fluids are also in a perpetual flux and ferment. Now its plain that this cannot be without the expense of those fluids and attrition of solids, and hence follows death and dissolution except those be repaired, a new accession of matter is therefore necessary to supply what flies off and is worn away, and much more so for the growth of animals [...] labour becomes necessary to provide vituals in this present state of things ... [On evil] mankind believes, indeed, from the light of nature, that God will translate good men into a better state; but it is necessary that they should be prepared here, as plants in a nursery, before they be removed into the garden where they are to bear fruit. god has therefore devised this life to be, as it were, the passage to a better. See also Irish Book Lover 4. King is covered by CAB and FDA but not JMC; QRY, acc. some source he was raised a Presbyterian. [ top ] D. J. ODonoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); lists Mully of Mountown, a poem [by Dr. W. King] in a volume with James Wards Phoenix Park (Dublin 1718), but does not list any W. King separately. NOTE that the same is cited as one of the poems in Samuel Whyte, The Shamrock (1772; edns. 1774), rep. as Collection of Poems (1792-94), and discussed in Russell Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (Phil: Pennsylvania UP 1959), p.54. Seamus Deane, gen. ed. , The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1 selects extracts from Summary of the Chief Principles of De Origine Mali [772-75] Predestination and Foreknowledge [7775-77]; The State of the Protestants of Ireland under the late King Jamess Government [868-70]; Letter to the Reverend Edward Nicolson [877-79]. REFS and REMS, When the Union of England and Scotland was effected in 1707, Swift, who strongly opposed it, reminded his audience of the inherently unstable order in Ireland, and when it was planned to establish a bank in Dublin in 1720, he praised Archbishop King for his opposition to it [Bryan Coleborne, ed., 474; do. 477]; one the theological conservatives taking up the cudgels against Tolands rationalism, 760; Gods attributes beyond our understanding, and God known only indirectly, 762; best known for his treatise on the origin of evil, De Origine Mali (1702), influenced Leibniz and Bayle et al.; Alexander Pope read Kings theories in the work of Bolingbroke, who had read them in Leibniz, and used them in Essay on Man [David Berman, ed.], 763-64; fideism of King, et al., 770; William Kings account of the bogs of Ireland vacillates between the expressed wish to make them useful and implicit suspicion that they are somehow, in their implacability and inconvenience, emblematic of all that is troublesome and strange about Ireland, [eds. Carpenter & Deane] 961; Archbishop Kings listing of [Catholic] atrocities during the reign of James II in State of the Protestants ... could lead to harsh enforcement of the Penal Laws, 963; FDA prints a sycophantic letter of 1691 from Nahum Tate in London, a college acquaintance 20 years before, 984-85. BIOG, 804, as above, and note, spent [..] his life striving to improve the Church of Ireland and to minimise the destructive effects of English rule in Ireland [Berman & Carpenter, eds.] BIOG & WORKS [as above], 804: became archbishop of Dublin in 1703 and spent his life trying to improve the Church of Ireland and minimise the destructive effects of English rule in Ireland; universally lamented. Note that the editorial comment in introducing an excerpt from The State of the Protestants (1691): Kings method was to collect many thousands of detailed incidences of unlawful, aggressive, or threatening behaviour by catholics towards protestants during the previous for years and to draw general conclusions from his examples (p.868). (See references to the Field Day reprint in John Wilson Foster, Encountering Traditions, in Foster & Helena C. G. Chesney, ed., Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History, Dublin: Lilliput 1997, pp.23-71, p.26-27.) [ top ] Roy Foster, Modern Ireland (London: Allen Lane 1988), p.118, b. Antrim, ed. TCD; Dean of St. Patricks, 1689; imprisoned as Williamite, 1689-90; published State [ ... &c.] (1691); opposed Presbyterianism; Archb. of Dublin, 1903; leader of opposition to English interest (to a ridiculous extravagance, national, according to the Viceroy); supported Swift against Woods hapence. Belfast Public Library holds A Discourse Concerning The Inventions of Men in the Worship of God [against Presbyterians] [1694]; also, The State of the Protestants of Ireland under the late King James Government (1691, 1692, 1730 edns.) [ top ] Ulster Univ. Library, Morris Collection holds A Great Archbishop of Dublin, William King D.D., 1650-1729, His Autobiography, family and a selection of his Correspondence (London 1906), 300p. [ed. Sir C. S. King]. Belfast Linen Hall Library holds Letters etc. 1) concerning a book by J. Boyce, 2) second admonition 3) versus Peter Manby 4) Original Works, 2 vols. (1776) [ top ] Notes Belfast Catechism: King asserts in letter to Archbishop of Canterbury that editions of the Covenant and Shorter Catechism were both printed in Belfast in 1694 (see Terence Brown, Northern Voices, 1975, p.6; no source.) Derry & Raphoe Diocesan Lirbary: The Librarys volumes date from between 1480 and 1900. The Librarys core was formed in 1729 by the Archbishop William King, then Bishop of Derry, when he bequeathed to the Lord Bishop of Derry and his successors the books he purchased from the executors of his predecessor, Ezekiel Hopkins. The Diocesan Library was made the object of a £.5 restoration grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2008, to be executed by Univ. of Ulster. [ top ] |