Bedell, William

Bedell, William (1571–1642), a reforming provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and bishop of Kilmore. Born at Black Notley in Essex in 1570, Bedell was educated at the puritan Emmanuel College, Cambridge (MA 1592, fellow 1593, BD 1599). After ministry in Essex he served 1607–10 as chaplain to the British ambassador to Venice, where his intellectual and cultural horizons, and his acquaintance with Roman Catholicism, were considerably widened. He returned to an Essex parish, and was plucked from relative obscurity in 1627 to serve as provost of Trinity College. There he found an ill‐governed and chaotic university and determinedly set about reforming it, drawing up a set of statutes and introducing teaching in Irish to enable clerical graduates to minister to the native population in its own language. In 1629 he was appointed bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh (resigning Ardagh in 1633). Here again Bedell demonstrated his interest in Irish culture, over seeing the translation of the Old Testament into Irish and seeking to redefine the objectives of the church away from an exclusive mission to the English and Scots colonists to the creation of an indigenous Protestantism. He also devoted himself to curbing abuses amongst his clergy and improving their income. Though his success was limited, he was, unlike many other Protestant ministers, left unmolested in the rising of 1641. The account of his death, from natural causes, in 1642, written by his son, records the stirring tribute paid to him at his graveside by the local Irish chieftain. The hostility that Bedell aroused amongst his fellow Protestants was largely a product of his implicit rejection of the essentially Anglicizing assumptions of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland.

Alan Ford