Description:
In this issue there is continued the catalogue of the papers of Archdeacon John Hamilton (1800-62) which was begun in volume xiiii (1988). In the file presented here the documents cover the period from 1814 to 1830 and are mainly in the form of letters sent to John Hamilton as student and young curate. Mary Purcell who catalogued the Hamilton papers gave a brief biography of this remarkable priest in volume xxxvi (1981). Born in 1800, John Hamilton was the eldest of seven children. His father died in 1816 and in the following year John went to the Irish College, Paris. His progress there was so rapid that he taught his fellow-students in his final years. It was a time of disturbance and upheaval in the college. Fr. Paul Long, appointed rector by the Irish bishops, was ousted more than once and continually harassed by Richard Ferris, who had held high office in the college prior to the Revolution and who, through his powerful friends in high places, effectively controlled the Bureau set up to supervise the Irish, English and Scots colleges, united under Napoleon. When study became impossible Hamilton and his friends, Morgan O'Brien of Cloyne and Myles Gaffney of Dublin, transferred to St. Sulpice. Ordained in 1824, Hamilton came home and was appointed curate in St. Mary's, the present Pro-Cathedral in Dublin. He was later administrator there from 1831 to 1853 and paid off the debt on the Pro-Cathedral. He also built St. Lawrence O'Toole's church and the schools at Seville Place and William Street. He ran an orphanage, a home for widows, a home for blind boys and a Catholic Library Bookshop. He revived the invaluable Catholic Directory the Society for the Propagation of the Faith into Ireland. As secretary to Archbishop Daniel Murray, he looked after the administration of the diocese during the archbishop's frequent illnesses and absences. Consequently the later papers of Archdeacon Hamilton are complementary to those of Archbishop Murray.
