the courts and answer what the paper claimed were entirely vexatious charges.9 Prior to the arrival of Edward Nangle, said the writer, the Achill islanders had lived a life of peace, harmony and goodwill towards one another but now discord, ill will and hatred were being propagated through the island. Achill had become ‘a theatre of riot and confusion’.
***
At seven o’clock on a mid-October evening in 1834, as the sun was setting in the west, 300 important guests, all men, gathered at the Mitre Hotel, Tuam, some sixty miles from Achill in a south-western direction, for a celebration dinner to honour the elevation of the new archbishop, John MacHale. Earlier in the day, at the chapel of Tuam, every available space was filled for the ceremony of installation as the Te Deum rang out from choir and organ. John MacHale had travelled that day from Castlebar, in an elegant Swiss carriage presented to him by the people and clergy of Killala, where he had ministered for almost a decade. A Freeman’s Journal journalist estimated that crowds numbering up to 40,000 greeted the new prelate on the route into Tuam which was bedecked with flags, while an arch of green boughs festooned the town’s north bridge.
When the dinner guests had eaten and drunk heartily, John MacHale rose to respond to the toast. He was, he said, humbled and overawed and, perhaps, a little fearful lest his future be like ‘a brilliant taper which might shed a brilliant light in a narrow apartment, but would only twinkle when exposed in a broader atmosphere’. If he had been criticised for indulging in the exposure of the grievances of the poor in the past, this was an accusation to which he would freely confess, he said, without the least contrition.
Within the week, the Freeman’s Journal was extolling the triumphal elevation of the archbishop, ‘now the bright luminary of the Catholic hierarchy, fearlessly vindicated’.10 John MacHale, asserted the writer, had vindicated his religion and cast the shield of protection around the poor at a time when besotted bigotry was at its height, and to be a Roman Catholic was considered a disgrace.
The new archbishop embarked on a tour of his extensive diocese, greeted everywhere by blazing bonfires. At Newport, a large procession greeted the archbishop outside the town, those at the front of the parade on foot, followed by horseback riders, and next the carriages. Tar barrels blazed in every direction, illuminating the town. The archbishop’s carriage halted at the house of the priest, James Hughes, and the people knelt to receive the episcopal benediction. One journalist claimed to have observed the rector and parish priest’s neighbour, William Stoney, watching among the crowd.
More than likely, prelate and priest discussed the worrying developments in Achill as it would have been unimaginable to both men that they could allow Edward Nangle to continue with his work at Dugort uncontested. The archbishop would soon visit the troublesome island.
John MacHale and Edward Nangle had several traits in common: an ability to deliver powerful rhetoric not tempered by prudence, restless energy, combative natures and an unshakeable belief in their version of the truth. Each man excelled in the crafting of belligerent polemics and in the thrill of robust, vicious public debate. Both had outlets through pen and pulpit for their venomous words to take poisonous flight. Both exhibited also a dangerous propensity for egomania and narcissism. What a coincidence that this pair of clergymen shared the stage in nineteenth-century Ireland and played out their antagonism theatrically on a remote Atlantic island.
Their mutual hostility soon focused on education and the mission schools, for education was Edward Nangle’s main bridgehead for conversions. He would combat popish error by establishing a system of scriptural education to teach the children the principles of Protestantism and civilised living. Not for the first time in the battle for the souls and hearts of a people, schools became the focal point of a religious crusade.
CHAPTER FOUR
Scriptural Education
It is hard to grasp, almost two centuries later, the phenomenon which was the Achill Mission colony and the disruptive chaos which it unleashed. What if an independent international adventurer stumbled upon the Achill scene and left behind a third-party account? As it happens, we have precisely such a report from Jane Franklin, described as the most travelled woman of her time, who visited every continent in the world except Antarctica in her lifetime.
In late summer 1835, Jane arrived at the Achill Mission colony in Dugort, just a year after the Nangles had taken up residence there. She confronted an impressive spectacle: a row of slated two-storey houses on the side of a mountain, ten acres of cultivated land producing potatoes and other crops, eight cabins under construction for colony converts – an oasis of development in the midst of the prevailing deprivation and squalor across the island. It was an impressive sight indeed to a visitor who passionately valued improvement and education.
She had spent several months the previous year separated from her husband and travelling on the Nile with a Prussian missionary, Johann Lieder, giving rise to innuendo of a romantic affair. On returning to England, she was unwell, perhaps pining for her exotic Nile travelling companion, and a trip to Ireland may have been a welcome diversion. In contrast to her middle-aged, stout, balding, explorer husband Sir John, Jane Franklin, then in her early forties, exuded the vibrant energy of youth. She was slim, graceful and elegant, amiable and charming, her expressive face framed by curly hair. But she was also sturdy and adventurous, strong and practical, one who described herself as a low-church, ‘no-frills Protestant’.1
On their way to Achill the visitors received a favourable report about Edward Nangle’s mission from an unlikely source. Father Lyons, Catholic dean of Killala, County Mayo, told them: ‘He is an excellent man and he is doing a great deal of good to the poor people of Achill.’ The difficult journey to the island would likely have excited the adventurous Jane: ‘At Ballycroy we were detained four days by a hurricane, living all this time in the coastguard watch-house and the cottage of the chief boatman’, before crossing by galley across dangerous waters to Achill’s Bullsmouth.
Edward, Eliza and Grace Warner hosted Jane and her husband at their Dugort home where they dined on vegetables and potatoes from the Nangle kitchen garden. While the single decanter of wine disappeared quickly from the table at the end of the meal, Edward apologised for the deficiency and produced a bottle of whiskey for the guests. Jane could see how harsh the year had been for Eliza: her first son, the child she had carried in her womb through a harsh and difficult Achill winter, had died in April before her milk came in, surviving for just two days. Edward, she learned, had buried the infant with his own hands in the small enclosed cemetery behind the mission buildings on the mountain slope. In the years ahead, it would become a communal Nangle burial place.
What impression did Edward Nangle make? To Jane, he was a tall, thin, pale, dark man with finely formed features, wearing such a mild pensive expression ‘that you would think he could not utter a harsh word, or raise his voice beyond the breathings of a prayer’. However, she could detect that he was driven by an overwhelming force, willing to persevere in his mission through fatigue, ill health, persecution and calumny in pursuit of his goals. He clearly believed that thousands of his deluded countrymen were perishing around him in their sins and errors and that it was his God-given duty to bring the true faith to these people.
‘Like another Luther is Mr Nangle in Achill,’ she observed, instinctively supportive of the mission’s work in opposing the ‘spiritual tyranny’ of Catholicism. ‘I have seen missionaries in many countries but never one so pure and high-minded as Mr Nangle.’
Jane sympathised with the position of Eliza and her sister: in her view, two excellent, gentle and zealous women who had renounced the luxuries to which they had been accustomed and devoted their energies to the island mission, while understandably apprehensive at the violence being directed at the colony. She heard that, during Edward’s absences, the chief officer of the coastguard, Francis Reynolds, came to the colony each night ‘to sit up with Mr Nangle’s family and be in readiness to protect
