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  • The World of Thomas Ward: Sex and Scandal in Late Seventeenth-Century Co. Antrim by Eamon Darcy
  • Martha F. Bowden
Eamon Darcy. The World of Thomas Ward: Sex and Scandal in Late Seventeenth-Century Co. Antrim. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016. Pp. 55. €C9.95 (paper).

In this micro-history, Mr. Darcy uses the trial of Thomas Ward, Dean of Down and Connor, as a window through which we can view the social and political state of the Church of Ireland in the 1690s. Little is known about Ward apart from the standard details of his professional life, including his matriculation and graduation from Trinity College Dublin and the dates of his ordination and preferments. The trial itself, however, in its twenty-two charges, gives a great deal of detail indeed; the context in which it took place, the 1693 commission set up by Queen Mary to inquire into episcopal and clerical neglect in the diocese of Down and Connor, allows Mr. Darcy to draw conclusions about the problems that the Anglican Church in Ireland encountered during the period. They include the neglect and absenteeism of the clergy, the encroachments of the Presbyterian Scots emigrating to Ireland at this time, and the perpetual threat that Catholicism represented. However according to Mr. Darcy’s evidence, because this diocese had been under scrutiny since the Restoration for its egregious irregularities, it may actually represent a distillation of the issues rather than a direct reflection of the church at the time.

The commission, chaired by Anthony Dopping, Bishop of Meath, and William King, Bishop of Derry, first investigated Thomas Hackett, the bishop of the diocese, and Lemuel [End Page 71] Matthews, the archdeacon. Hackett, who was absent from his diocese for thirteen years, was accused, not surprisingly, of neglecting his duties. If the description of the shambles of an ordination at which he presided in a desperate attempt to fend off the charges is at all accurate, neglect is the least of it; he appears not to know his way around the liturgy of one of his most important obligations. In his absence, Archdeacon Matthews appropriated more power than his position allowed. Hackett’s claim that his ill health precluded his fulfilling his role and Matthews’s defense that he had to do what he could to hold the diocese together, did not benefit either of them. Hackett was removed from office and his wife, a real-life prototype of Trollope’s Mrs. Proudie, was excommunicated for exerting too much influence in his absence. Matthews, a pluralist who had not been in some of his parishes for twenty years, and had usurped episcopal authority by issuing blank marriage licenses “to be sold throughout the country,” was suspended from his duties and positions and excommunicated for good measure.

In the trials of the bishop and archdeacon there is much scandal but the sex arrives when the committee turned its attention to the dean. Of the twenty-two charges against him, two were administrative in nature. The others concerned his sexual proclivities. He was charged with adultery, soliciting sex from women in return for money and, in one case, a gelding (offered, perhaps symbolically, to the woman’s husband), fathering illegitimate children, and sexual assault. The testimony of the witnesses also reveals that the inhabitants of the diocese were inveterate peeping toms. They collected evidence of the dean’s behavior by looking through windows, keyholes, and gaps in door frames, and when they were not sure what they were seeing, they did not hesitate to call in their spouses to have a look. Thus, it is culturally appropriate that Mr. Darcy describes Ward’s trial as “a keyhole through which we can view life and society in late 17th-century east Ulster.”

Central to Mr. Darcy’s argument is the concept of fame, or reputation, so central that the subtitle would more accurately be “Fame, Sex, and Scandal.” The term refers to both reputation and gossip, a man’s known character and what was whispered about him. It also had legal weight: “A person’s reputation could provide a reason for arrest after a crime was committed,” in English common law...

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