Marcus Beresford (bishop)

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George Beresford & Frances Parker Bushe
SpouseMary L'Estrange
Elizabeth Trail-Kennedy
Previous post(s)Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh (1854–1862)
EducationRichmond School
Alma materTrinity College, Cambridge

Marcus Gervais Beresford

Primate of All Ireland
from 1862 until his death.

Early life

Beresford was born in 1801 at the Custom House,

George Beresford, Bishop of Kilmore and later of Kilmore and Ardagh, and of his wife Frances, a daughter of Gervase Parker Bushe and a niece of Henry Grattan.[1][2] Beresford belonged to a family "connected for generations with the highest dignity and power in the civil and ecclesiastical administration of Ireland"[3]

Educated at

Doctor of Civil Laws by Oxford in 1864.[1]

Career

In 1824, Beresford was ordained deacon and in 1825 priest, and was quickly appointed Rector of Kildallon, County Cavan, a parish in his father's diocese of Kilmore. Three years later, he was preferred to the vicarages of Drung and Larah in the same diocese, benefices which he held until 1839 when he became archdeacon of Ardagh when Ardagh was united with Kilmore. His father was succeeded by Bishop Leslie, but on Leslie's death in 1854 Beresford followed in his father's footsteps as bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh and was consecrated in Armagh Cathedral on 24 September 1854.[1]

In 1862, following the death of his first cousin once-removed

Viceroy.[1]

In the Church, Beresford gained the reputation of being a statesmanlike presence during the storms which were caused by

disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, playing a large part in the negotiations this called for, and then afterwards had the hard task of reconstituting the church.[1]

Beresford died at Armagh on 26 December 1885 and was entombed there in St Patrick's Cathedral.[4]


Wives and children

On 25 October 1824 Beresford married Mary, a daughter of Henry L'Estrange of

George De la Poer Beresford (1831–1906) and Major Henry Marcus Beresford (1835–1895).[1][2]

Beresford's first wife died in 1845, and on 6 June 1850 he married secondly Elizabeth, daughter of James Trail-Kennedy of Annadale, County Down and the widow of Robert George Bonford of Rahenstown, County Meath.[1][2] There is a memorial to Elizabeth in the south aisle at St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh.[5]

Notes

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2198
    (subscription required for online access), retrieved 21 December 2008.
  2. ^ a b c Most Rev. Marcus Gervais Beresford at thepeerage.com
  3. ^ The Times, 28 December 1885
  4. ISBN 978-1-905286-48-5
  5. ISBN 978-1-905286-48-5

Sources

Falkiner, Cæsar Litton (1901). "Beresford, Marcus Gervais" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Church of Ireland titles
Preceded by
John Powell Leslie
 Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh
1854–1862 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Archbishop of Armagh
1862–1885 		Succeeded by
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