SAINTS IN THE CELTIC TRADITION

CELTIC TRADITION

FR MAURICE MacKENRAGHTY JUNE 20 (17 IRISH MARTYRS)

In 1558 James, the 14th Earl of Desmond, having had four wives and two religions, died at Askeaton Castle in west Limerick and was buried in the friary church nearby. His marriages were successive, and his religious affiliation depended on the political climate of the day. His son Gerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, took possession of the Desmond estates across Munster about the same time as Queen Elizabeth Tudor inherited England from her father King Henry VIII. The hostility between Elizabeth and Gerald was mutual, palpable and lifelong. On two occasions, in 1569 and 1579, the earl was in open revolt against Her Majesty, and it was while the earl, having lost his estates, was fighting for his life in the bogs of Sliabh Luachra on the Cork-Kerry border that I first encountered the earl’s faithful chaplain Fr Maurice MacKenraghty.

Although born in Kilmallock, Maurice’s family background was in the barony Iraghticonnor to the north of the Feale and Cashen rivers; and curiously in that part of Kerry the word Erraught/Iraght is anglicised Enright. Having taken his degree in theology, Fr Maurice was ordained, became a noted preacher in his native countryside and, probably in 1579 or earlier, the priest became chaplain to the earl and persevered with him until his own capture by Lord Roche in Duhallow in September 1583.

Earlier in the 1579 rebellion two Franciscans, Fr Conn O’Rourke and Bishop Patrick Ó Healy, newly appointed to the see of Mayo, secretly made their way back into Ireland and having arrived at Askeaton were welcomed by Countess Eleanor, wife of the earl. Some three days later, however, whether through fear for her husband’s safety or her own, having harboured the priest and bishop, Eleanor notified the authorities of the newly arrived friars. They were promptly arrested and jailed in Limerick before being taken to Kilmallock for execution by hanging on August 13, 1579.

The earl had an inconspicuous but substantial stone house and a drylined well built at his hideout in Muinganine, near modern Ballydesmond in western Duhallow. It was here that the earl, Eleanor, and Dr Saunders, the papal nuncio, were almost captured by Pelham, the lord deputy. The three effected a hairbreadth escape on ponies, the earl westwards into Kerry and the others north over the Limerick border. Mass vestments and a chalice were abandoned in their flight, items which Pelham sent to England as presents to his friends. The name of the hideout in Muinganine is still remembered as Réiteach an Íarla (the earl’s palace), a spot to which Mr Tom Walsh, a local farmer-historian from Glenlahan, guided me.

Fr Maurice MacKenraghty was one of the earl’s remaining supporters when he himself was betrayed by Murty Swiney, a deserter from Desmond’s army. The priest was conveyed to Clonmel where he died a martyr’s death on April 30, 1585 having been drawn at a horse’s tail to the place of execution. He was hanged from the gallows, cut down half-alive and then beheaded. Clonmel seems to be ‘the keeper of his bones’.

John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsR

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Volume 88. No. 5 June 2022 A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960

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