The finances and expenses of the Church of Ireland episcopate c.1660-1740: a study of their resources and spending

Abstract

The six chapters of my thesis are intended as a contribution to the task of recovering the backgrounds of the bishops of the Church of Ireland in its most crucial phase of its history. While a handful of historians have drawn our attention to the financial problems of the Reformation Church, we lack studies on ecclesiastical wealth for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The financial position of the Church of Ireland and its impoverishment were recurrent themes in the debates following the Reformation. The methods by which the bishops would gather its income, and how their wealth was distributed, is the main focal point of this thesis. Little is known about their lifestyles, their palaces, their cathedrals, or their estate management practices. We are also little informed about their possessions and the nuances of day-to-day life. Thus, my intention is to examine bishops finances on a broader scale by tracing the sources of their income and their expenses. Bishops in late seventeenth-century Ireland were certainly among the elite of the realm. Few positions in royal government could offer such prestige, authority, and wealth that came with holding to the office of bishop. The divergent techniques of how episcopal estate management were administered can thus reveal important contrasts in the ways in which power was exercised by bishops in the localities. The thesis has two aims. Firstly, to ascertain the value of episcopal wealth through a detailed analysis of the various sources of income which they derived from their see lands and private wealth. Secondly, I will assess the patterns of episcopal expenditure which will broaden our understanding about the duties and performances of bishops in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.