Oliver Plunkett was the Archbishop of Armagh, the head of the Church in Ireland. This position made him a natural target for any anti-catholic feeling and there was plenty of that in England between 1678 and 1681.
Oliver was born in troubled times. Earlier that year King Charles I had dissolved Parliament and started to rule in person without reference to any but his own few advisers. This attempt at personal rule ended in 1640 when the King could not afford to pay an army to defend Anglican England from the Presbyterian Scots. He recalled Parliament to raise money. But meanwhile Parliamentary grievances had festered and two years later the English Civil War began. Puritans, Anglicans and Presbyterians fought one another but Catholics, with their connections to the absolute monarchies of Catholic France and Spain, were treated as everyone’s enemies.
Oliver went to the Irish College in Rome to train for the priesthood in 1646 and was ordained in 1654. It was too dangerous for him to go back to Ireland. By this time Cromwell was running the Commonwealth having conquered Ireland (1649-53). He survived an assassination attempt that year and purged Parliament of anyone hostile to him. Catholicism was banned and priests were executed. Oliver stayed in Rome to represent the interests of the Irish clergy. He became professor of theology and his talents were recognised.
Meanwhile life in war torn England and Ireland became a little easier when the monarchy was restored in 1660 and Charles II came to the throne. The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion was an amnesty for all sides of the Civil War. But Catholics were still not trusted. Charles also asked Parliament to pass four religious laws which effectively disenfranchised Catholics and Presbyterians in England and Ireland. The Church was disheartened and began to lose its sense of purpose. The sectarianism encouraged by these laws can still be seen today.
This was the situation which Oliver Plunkett had to deal with when he was finally able to return to Ireland in 1670. He found a Church sinking into ignorance. Schools had been closed. Clergy were not properly trained. Drunkenness was rife. Oliver set to work to build new schools for the young and in 1670 he established a Jesuit College for 150 students, 40 of whom were sons of Protestant families, in Drogheda. Perhaps things progressed too quickly for those in power and in 1672 Parliament passed the Test Act: “An act for preventing dangers which may happen from popish recusants”. Catholics could not pass the test or take the oath that went with it and Oliver, as Head of the Church in Ireland, was prominent in his rejection of the Act. His college was demolished and Oliver had to go on the run, travelling in disguise, often cold and starving.
The British public was whipped up into an anti-Catholic frenzy when Titus Oates persuaded the government that there was a Popish Plot to kill the King. He and his gang made a list of about 100 prominent Catholic plotters and hid it where it would be easily found. Oliver Plunkett was caught and accused of conspiring to bring 20,000 French soldiers into the country. The Irish, knowing the good he was trying to do for the country, were unlikely to find him guilty on this trumped up charge so the authorities moved him to London to be tried.
Oliver was convicted of high treason and condemned to death by being hanged, drawn and quartered. Titus Oates and the judge that condemned him were thrown into prison for perjury the very next day. Oliver was the last Catholic martyr to die in England and, when he was canonised in 1975, the first to be recognised as a saint for almost 700 years. He is a saint because, despite all the difficulties he faced, he persisted in his vocation.
Author: C B Whittle