Peter Browne

Alfred Webb

A Compendium of Irish Biography

1878

Browne, Peter, Bishop of Cork; previously Provost of Trinity College. He was appointed to the former office in 1710. A very high character is given of him in Ware's Bishops, where also his generous charitable donations and bequests are mentioned. In 1730 he published a tract Against the Custom of Drinking to the Memory of the Dead, in truth levelled against those who were continually pledging to the memory of William III. It attracted considerable attention; but its only effect was that William's admirers appended to their toasts, "in spite of the Bishop of Cork." He died at Cork, 25th August 1735, and was buried at Bishopstown. Ware styles him "a great enemy to death-bed donations; an austere, retired and mortified man; his whole life was one uniform tenor of piety and true religion." "A man not unworthy of note in the philosophical annals of Ireland, as the author afterwards of the Procedure and Limits of Human Understanding, and the Divine Analogy, and as a learned, critical antagonist of Locke. . . In 1700 he was known as the author of the most learned and vigorous reply then encountered by Toland's Christianity not Mysterious."

Sources

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

31. Berkeley, George, Bishop of Cloyne, Life and Works: Alexander C. Fraser. 4 vols. Oxford, 1871.

339. Ware, Sir James, Works: Walter Harris. 2 vols. Dublin, 1764.

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