Life
?1618-1688; b. Mooretown, Co. Kildare; ed. St. REFSony’s College,
Louvain; reader in dividity; returned to Kilkenny; urged the rights of
English kings in Ireland in A Loyal Remonstrance, [1660], and has
been called the theologian of the Confederation; settled in London, 1669,
and published History and Vindication of the Loyal Formulary of Irish
Remonstrance (1674), having been excommunicated by Gregory VII in
1670; written to justify the political adherence of Roman Catholics to
the side of the Duke of Ormond in the Civil War of 1642 and years after,
it contains documents of the period and constitutes the chief source on
the Formulary and many of ther personages involved with it; condemned
by Rome, Louvain, and the religious orders, causing the papal nuncio to
say that Walsh ‘vomited worth in one hour more filth and blasphemy
than Luther and Calivin together in three years’; The Controversial
Letters (1673-74) contains his correspondence with the Vatican; conducted
pamphlet war with Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, known as ‘the Hammer
of the Catholics’ and the organiser of an extensive spy-ring throughout
the country in the teeth of Ormond’s administration; Ormond provided
Walsh with a pension, upon which he lived out his last years; said to
have been reconciled with the Church in his final years; inovlved in late
controversy with Bishop Stilingfleet and the Jesuits, attacking Stillingfleet’s
case in his own An answer to three treatises (London 1678). RR
DNB DIW FDA OCIL
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Works
Queries Concerning the Lawfulness of the Present Cessation (Kilkenny
1648); The History and Vindication of the Loyal Formulary of Irish
Remonstrance ([London & Dublin] 1674) [Wing W634; copy in Bishop
Stillingfleet Collection of Marsh’s Library]; Causa Valesiana
epistolis ternis praelibata (Lon 1684); A Prospect of the State
of Ireland from the Year of the World 1756 to the Year of Christ 1652
(London 1682); Four Letters on Several Subjects (London 1686).
Note, the British Library Catalogue lists Irish Colours Displayed,
under ‘Ireland, Miscellaneous’.
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Criticism
Benignus Millett, The Irish Franciscans 1651-1665 (Rome 1964);
see also an account of Walsh and his part in the Confederation, in Irish
Studies (1988).
Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam 1986), pp.321-22.
Muriel McCarthy & Caroline Sherwood-Smith, eds., Hibernia Resurgens: Catalogue of Marsh’s Library (1994), p.40, noting copy of History and Vindication in Marsh’s Library; biog. notice as supra.]
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography: Peter Walsh,
known in Latin as “Valesius”; Irish Franciscan, b. Mooretown,
Co. Kildare; ed. Louvain, div. lect. Kilkenny convent, 1646; encouraged
Irish party to resist proposals of Rinuccini and make peace with Ormond,
1646-68; preached against Cornelius O’Mahoney in defence of Charles
I title to Ireland, 1647; guardian of Kilkenny convent, 1648-50; chaplain
of Castlehaven’s army in Munster, 1650-51; withdrew to London, 1652;
visited Madrid, 1654; then Holland, lived obscurely in London, 1655-60;
pamphlets on Irish affairs, 1660-62; proposed Loyal Remonstrance to be
addressed by Irish Catholics to Charles II; canvassed actively, 1661-62,
in London, 1664-65, in Dublin, and again in 1665-69; opposed by Vatican;
settled in Rome, 1669; pensioned by Ormonde; excommunicated by Franciscan
chapter-gen. Valladolid, 16790; published controversial letters against
claims of Gregory VII, 1672-84; replied to Thomas Barlow’s Popery,1686;
other works. ). [No refs. in Foster, Modern Ireland (1988), nor
entry in DIB]
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, selects A Prospect of the State of Ireland, 268-69; BIOG., 273, obstinately urged loyalty to crown in all circumstances; wrote history of Ireland; d. London, 1688. WORKS, Queries Concerning the Lawfulness of the Present Cessation (Kilkenny 1648); The History and Vindication of the Loyal Formulary of Irish Remonstrance (n.p. 1674); Causa Valesiana epistolis ternis praelibata (Lon 1684); A Prospect of the State of Ireland from the Year of the World 1756 to the Year of Christ 1652 (Lon 1682); Four Letters on Several Subjects (Lon 1686).
Daniel O’Connell, in Memoir of Ireland (1844),
cites Peter Walsh’s Reply to a Person of Quality [n.d., n.p.], ‘Not
to dwell on particulars, the whole body of the Catholic nobility and gentry
of Ireland did, by their agents at Oxford in 1643, petition his Majesty,
‘that all the murders committed on both sides, in this war, might
be examined in a future parliament and the actors of them exempted out
of all acts of indemnity and oblivion’. But this proposal the Protestant
agents, wisely declined; upon which it was justly observed that if it
should be asked wherefore this offer of the accused Irish has been always
rejected or evaded by their accusers, (for it was more than once repeated
afterwards,) there is no man of reason but understands it was, because
the Irish were not guilty of those barbarous and inhuman crimes with which
they were charged; and because those who charged them so exorbitantly,
found themselves, or those of their party, truly chargeable with more
numerous crimes and murders, committed on the stage of Ireland, whereon
they had acted, and yet but partly, their own proper guilt; for many of
them had acted it on that of Great Britain to, even the most horrid guilt
imaginable, by the bloody and most execrable murder of the best and most
innocent of Kings.’ (O’Connell, op. cit., p.307.)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)