Life
1567-1645 [Spottiswoode]; grad. Glasgow Univ., 1583; travelled to Denmark
with James VI, 1589; persuaded to Anglican orders by Whitgift; bishop
of Clogher, 1621; instrumental in destruction of Lough Derg sites of Catholic
pilgrimage; fled to England during Rebellion, 1641; bur. Westminster.
Notes
Michael Dames, Mythic Ireland (1992)- relates: Bishop Spottiswoode, the Protestant bishop of Clogher, ignored pleas of
Henrietta Maria, who was the queen of Charles I, in throwing down the
sacred sites on St Patrick’s Island. Spottiswoode visited the island
on 8 June 1632, and ‘observed 431 persona doing such fooleries there
as is not be be imagined could be done by Christians’; gained order
from Lord Justices to ‘cause the Chapel, and all the Irish houses
now situate [sic] on that island called St. Patrick’s Purgatory,
and all buildings, pavements, walls, works, foundations, circles, caves,
cells, and vaults thereof of lime or stones to be thrown in th lough or
water’; on eventually raising a party to assist the purpose, he found
the cave to be ‘a poor beggarly hole, made with some stones laid
together with men’s hands without any great art, and after covered
with earth, such as husbandmen make to keep a few hogs from the rain.’
‘[We] undermined the chapel, which was well covered with shingles,
and brought all down together. Then we brake down the Circles and Saints
beds, which were like so many coalpits, and so pulled some some great
Irish houses. We effected that for which we came hither ... which hath
wonderfully displeased them that were bewitched with these fooleries.’
(Spottiswoode, letter to Archbishop of Armagh, 31 Oct. 1632; quoted
in Bishop Henry Jones, St. Patrick’s Purgatory, 1647;
see Dames, Mythic Ireland, 1992, p.40.]
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