Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760-1810 (review)

Charles Agar (1735-1809) came from a Kilkenny landowning family which controlled four to five seats in the Irish Parliament. As Bishop of Cloyne (1768-1779), Archbishop of Cashel (1779-1801), and Archbishop of Dublin (1801-1809), he was the most prominent political and administrative defender of the Church of Ireland's interests in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and a leading government manager in the Irish House of Lords. After the Anglo-Irish Union (which he supported on being reassured it would not endanger Protestant Church interests), he was an influential Irish representative peer at Westminster (he was created Baron Somerton in 1795 and Earl of Normanton in 1806). Deeply suspicious of Catholic relief legislation, Agar allegedly first instilled in George III the theory that royal assent to the admission of Catholics to parliament would breach the Coronation Oath.

Agar carefully publicized his achievements in his lifetime and left an extensive archive—in the Hampshire Record Office since 1957, heretofore neglected by historians of Ireland. His descendants, however, failed to sponsor a biography, and Agar's historical reputation was left to the criticisms of his political opponents, taken up and magnified by Victorian moralizers; he is thus usually seen as oppressing his country for political advancement, alienating diocesan property to enrich his family, and allowing the medieval cathedral on the Rock of Cashel to fall into ruin.

Dr. Malcolmson draws on his unrivalled knowledge of eighteenth-century Irish archives to challenge this assessment. This is not so much a conventional biography as a series of interlocking essays – on Agar's family connections, his diocesan activities, his role in the Irish administration at a time of war and rebellion. Through extensive comparisons with the careers and attitudes of other contemporary bishops, it becomes a cumulative study of the Church of Ireland in the eighteenth century.

Malcolmson emphasizes that while Agar is remembered as a politician, he thought of himself as a churchman first and foremost. In this role Agar showed himself a capable administrator, legislator, and man of business, who far outshone his episcopal contemporaries. The accusation that Agar enriched himself by alienating diocesan lands is wildly exaggerated (it derives from a lease which unquestionably involved conflict of interest, but involved financial risk and profited succeeding Cashel bishops as well as Agar's descendants; Agar made his fortune on the stock market, unlike some asset-stripping episcopal contemporaries). The medieval Cashel cathedral had been irretrievably ruined by previous bishops; Agar, who was a scholar possessed of considerable musical and architectural taste, was zealous in building churches (including a replacement cathedral) and glebe-houses, enforcing clerical residence, and conducting visitations. While he did engage in nepotism (exhorting the beneficiaries to higher standards of conduct, with mixed results) and was lukewarm though apparently sincere in his religious sentiments, Malcolmson robustly and convincingly argues that by the standards of his time he was a "gentle reformer" who sought to reallocate the resources of the church to promote greater efficiency while minimizing reliance on state aid (since this brought increased dependence on an Irish landed elite notoriously suspicious of clerical aggrandizement).

Malcolmson argues that the eighteenth-century Church of Ireland was fatally hindered by the extra-ecclesiastical responsibilities incurred by its place in the system of government, by its financial system (which devoted the bulk of resources to funding individuals rather than institutions, and encouraged suspicions about financial malpractice), and by successive administrations' appointments of politically-reliable English-born bishops over Irish clergy. (He provides scathing vignettes of some colleagues and rivals, such as Archbishop Robinson of Armagh—now revered for his building-work in Armagh city, but presented here as a peevish valetudinarian primarily concerned with enriching his relatives.) Malcolmson suggests that if Agar had not been passed over for the sees of Dublin (in 1778) and Armagh (in 1794 and 1800), he might have provided his church with...