Lancelot Bulkeley, Archbishop of Dublin

Wikipedia Biographical Summary

Lancelot (Launcelot) Bulkeley (1568?-1650) was an English archbishop of Dublin.

Life

He was the eleventh and youngest son of Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris and Cheadle, but the eldest by his second wife, Agnes, daughter of Thomas Needham of Stenton. He was thus half-brother of Sir Richard Bulkeley. He entered at the beginning of 1587, as a commoner, Brasenose College, Oxford, where he proceeded B.A.; he afterwards moved to St. Edmund Hall, where he took his M.A. degree in 1593. On 13 November of the same year he was ordained deacon by Hugh Bellot, bishop of Bangor.

Some years later he became archdeacon of Dublin, and he was promoted to its see in 1619. Subsequently he was named by James I a member of the Privy Council. He revived the controversy regarding the primacy of Ireland, and on the question being submitted to Thomas Wentworth, Lord Deputy of Ireland, the precedency was given to the Archbishop of Armagh. At Christmas 1628 he was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to prohibit the public celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass. When the news reached the city there was a large scale riot, and a mob stoned Bulkeley, who had to seek refuge in a private house; to his outrage, Dublin Corporation refused to take any steps to assist him and refused admission to the troops sent by the Crown to quell the riot.

Bulkeley was one of the Council who in 1646 issued a proclamation confirming the peace treaty concluded in that month between the Marquis of Ormonde and the Roman Catholics. For resisting the act prohibiting the use of the Book of Common Prayer he was in 1647 committed to prison. On 8 March 1649 it was decreed that all honours, castles, etc. belonging to the archbishopric of Dublin should be vested in General Henry Ireton, president of Munster.

The archbishop died at Tallaght on 8 September 1650, in his eighty-second year, and was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin under the communion-table. By his wife Alice, daughter of Roland Bulkeley of Conwy, he had at least seven children: William (Archdeacon of Dublin), Richard, Margaret, Alice, Dorothy, Mary and Grizel. William was the father of Sir Richard Bulkeley, 1st Baronet.

He was the author of a pamphlet, Proposals for sending back the Nobility and Gentry of Ireland.

SOURCE: Wikipedia contributors, 'Lancelot Bulkeley', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 8 October 2013, 22:50 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lancelot_Bulkeley&oldid=5...> [accessed 31 October 2013]

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"Bulkeley, Lancelot (1568/9–1650), Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin, was the youngest son of Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris, Anglesey, and his second wife, Agnes, daughter of Thomas Needham of Shropshire. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1587, graduated BA, and took an MA at St Edmund's Hall, Oxford, in 1593. On 13 November 1593 he was ordained deacon, and on 25 March 1594 a priest of the diocese of Bangor; he was instituted to the livings of Llanddyfnan (1593) and Llandegfan (Beaumaris (1594)). He married Alice, daughter of Rowland Bulkeley of Conway, and had at least one son, William, later archdeacon of Dublin, and two daughters, Grissel and Mary. He was appointed archdeacon of Dublin 5 May 1613 and archbishop of Dublin 18 August 1619, being consecrated at Drogheda 3 October 1619. He held the prebends of Castleknock (from 1620) and Kilmactalway (from 1630) and the treasurership of Cashel (from 1634) in commendam. He seems to have been a member of the Irish council by July 1619.
As archbishop Bulkeley challenged successive archbishops of Armagh with regard to the Irish church primacy, perhaps in association with the removal of ecclesiastical prerogative jurisdiction from Dublin to Armagh in 1622. The case was resolved only with the June 1634 ruling in favour of Armagh. On 26 December 1629 Bulkeley was involved in an attempt to suppress a Franciscan chapel in Dublin, prompting a riot and further government action against catholic religious houses. He was named to the Irish court of high commission in February 1636. Bulkeley remained in Dublin after the outbreak of insurrection in 1641, acting as a privy councillor, and signed the articles of the 1646 Ormond peace. Under the commonwealth he was involved in a religious service in St Patrick's, Dublin, on 1 November 1649, where the proscribed prayer book was used, and appears to have suffered confinement as a result.
Archbishop Bulkeley resided principally at the archiepiscopal castle at Tallaght, Co. Dublin, and died there, aged eighty-one, on 8 September 1650. He was buried in St Patrick's cathedral, Dublin. A record of his 1630 visitation of the archdiocese of Dublin survives in Trinity College, Dublin, and has been published."
Sources
The whole works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland, ed. Walter Harris (1764), i, 79, 355–6; Cotton, Fasti, i, 50; ii, 21, 129, 134, 156; Liber mun. pub. Hib., pt ii, 79; CSPI, 1615–25, 344, 362; 1625–32, 364; DNB, iii, 231; M. V. Ronan (ed.), ‘Archbishop Bulkeley's visitation of Dublin, 1630’, Archiv. Hib., new ser., viii (1941), 56–98; E. Gwynne Jones, ‘History of the Bulkeley family . . .’, Transactions of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Field Club (1948), 91; Wadding papers, 330, 333, 341; Victor Treadwell, Buckingham and Ireland 1616–1628 (1998), 56
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