Robert Knox (bishop)
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Robert Bent Knox (25 September 1808 – 23 October 1893) was the
Early life
Born in 1808 at Dungannon Park, County Tyrone, the country seat of his grandfather, Thomas Knox, 1st Viscount Northland (died 1818), Knox was the second son of the Hon. Charles Knox (died 1825), Archdeacon of Armagh, and his wife, Hannah, the daughter of Robert Bent MP.[1] His uncles were the bishops William Knox and Edmund Knox, his niece was the writer Kathleen Knox.
Educated at
Career
In 1832, Knox was ordained deacon and priest by Bishop Beresford of Kilmore. On 7 May 1834 he became chancellor of Ardfert. On 16 October 1841 he was collated as prebendary of St Munchin's, Limerick, by his uncle Edmund Knox, Bishop of Limerick, who also made him his domestic chaplain.[1]
In 1849 he became a Doctor of Divinity and was appointed Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore. In 1886, he was created Archbishop of Armagh.[2] He was succeeded in Down, Connor and Dromore by William Reeves.
Knox was nominated to the see of Down, Connor, and Dromore by George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, at the time Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Samuel Wilberforce later reported in his diary for 26 August 1861, some gossip about this appointment; James Henthorn Todd had said of Knox that he was "…very foolish, without learning, piety, judgment, conduct, sense, appointed by a job, that his uncle should resign Limerick", while Anthony La Touche Kirwan (Dean of Limerick, died 1868), said that Knox "…used, when made to preach by his uncle, to get me to write his sermon, and could not deliver it".[1][3]
Nevertheless, Knox was the author of various ecclesiastical and secular works.[2]
Knox made no secret of his view that
Following the death of
Family
On 5 October 1842, Knox married Catherine Delia FitzGibbon, daughter of Thomas Gibbon FitzGibbon of Ballyseeda,
Selected publications
- Ecclesiastical Index [of Ireland] (1839)
- Fruits of the revival, in Steane's Ulster Revival (1859)
Notes
- ^ (subscription required for online access). Retrieved on 19 December 2008.
- ^ New York Times24 October 1893 (attached to article DEMOCRATS SUPPORT SCHIEREN) (pdf file)
- ^ Wilberforce, R. G., Life of the right reverend Samuel Wilberforce… with selections from his diaries and correspondence (1882), vol. 3, p. 25.
- ISBN 978-1-905286-48-5
Sources
- Gordon, Alexander (1901). Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In