Archbishop Power le Poer Trench

Trench, Power le Poer, Archbishop of Tuam, son of the Earl of Clancarty, was born in Sack ville-street, Dublin, 10th June 1770. He entered Trinity College as a pensioner, 2nd July 1787; was ordained a deacon in 1791, consecrated Bishop of Lismore and Waterford in 1802, translated to Elphin in 1810, and promoted Archbishop of Tuam in 1819. He may be said to have headed the evangelical party of the Irish Church, and consistently opposed nearly all the political changes in Ireland during his episcopate. He took a vigorous part against the National System of Education, "as at variance with the reverence due to the Word of God, and the temporal and spiritual welfare of the country," and was one of the seventeen Irish prelates that signed the protest against it in February 1832.

He was very benevolent. W. Torrens McCullagh describes a visit in his company to the poor of Tuam in November 1834: — "I never saw less ostentatious and more universal respect shown to any man of his station. It seemed habitual to the people to see the venerable bishop come amongst them, and listen to their tales of suffering." The Archbishop died 26th March 1839, aged 68, and was buried with his ancestors at Creagh, near Ballinasloe. Upon his death the see of Tuam ceased to be metropolitan. Sirr's bulky memoir of the Archbishop, published in 1845, contains much that is valuable relating to the ecclesiastical history of his diocese and of Ireland generally; but in nothing is it more instructive than as showing the great change for the better — both in the bearing of religious bodies towards each other, and in the material condition of the people — that has come over Ireland since his time.

Sources

118. Ecclesiae Hiberniae Fasti: Rev. Henry Cotton: Indices by John R. Garstin, M.A. 5 vols. Dublin, 1851-'60.

326. Trench, Memoir of Power Le Poer, Archbishop of Tuam: Rev. J. D. Sirr, D.D. London, 1845.