Christ Church Tourmakeady

In 1852 Plunket increased his holdings to over 10,000 acres, and his 203 tenants were recorded as paying an annual rent of 2000 pounds. Plunket was a champion of the “second reformation”,  an evangelical campaign which ran from the 1820’s to the 1860’s. These evangelical voluntary societies, such as the Irish Society and the Irish Church Mission  focused their work on the poorer parts of Ireland, such as the Irish speaking regions of Munster and Connaught. This Protestant revival was promoted by Irish translations of the Bible, Irish speaking readers of scripture and the distribution of food. The most significant evangelical society, and possibly the most radical was the Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics. The society  was financed by subscriptions from England. The activities of this group were concentrated on the northern part of Connemara, in the  Clifden area, Achill and the Lough Mask region in Mayo. Bishop Plunket and the first rector he appointed in Tourmakeady, Rev. Hamilton Townsend were strong supporters of the Irish Church Missions Society. Mission schools were established in Tourmakeady, Cappaghduff and Partry. Another school at Drimcoggy was opened and closed.

The work of the Irish Church Missions Society was initially focused on the work houses. In these desolate and poverty stricken institutions they were, according to themselves, very successful. The recovery of the country from the famine saw the populations of the work houses drop and the Missions Society turned its attention to educational matters. Schools in the more isolated regions of Ireland were poorly funded and the Missions Society saw the school going children, and the parents of these children, as a suitable population for the work of the Society. This was where Plunket and his schools ran foul of the local clergy. What became known as the “War in Partry”, was a conflict over the influence that the second reformation was having on the schools and more generally the education system. However an important part of the conflict focused  on the tenancy of the parents of school going children who were expected to convert, and if they did not, were under threat of eviction.

(The fact that there was no war, though there was violence and tension, and that the events took place in Tourmakeady not Partry never stopped people referring to the dispute, mainly between Bishop Plunket on the one hand and the two Catholic Clerics Fathers Ward and Lavelle on the other, as the Partry Affair or more colourfully the “War in Partry”).

A former Professor of Philosophy in the Irish College in Paris, Lavelle would prove to be more than a match for Plunkett. A colourful and controversial character, he left his post in Paris under threat of arrest and would later steal the Cross of Cong while in that Parish. This incident occurred in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin, where the Cross was kept, and Lavelle, after asking to see the Cross of Cong put it under his cassock and walked out with it. He was arrested on his way to the train station. Lavelle was an avid letter writer and a more stalwart foe than Ward. Lavelle set to work preaching to his parishioners about the dangers of the Mission Schools and within weeks there were reports of people throwing themselves on their knees in Church asking forgiveness. As a result only a handful of Catholic children remained in Mission schools and these were employees of Plunket who faced eviction or loss of employment if they took their children out of school. Five Catholic national schools were opened in the Parish in early 1859, largely funded by  John McHale the catholic bishop of Tuam.

However Lavelle was also pursuing his own tactics of confrontation with those  he saw as the promoters of the second reformation, the mission teachers, the mission agents and indeed non compliant parishioners. In sermons he warned parents who allowed children to attend these schools that they were exposing them to evil and danger. There are reports of people going on their knees at the altar seeking forgiveness, as a result. These episodes, sometimes violent, always full of tension led to Lavelle being in and out of court. It also meant he was in and out of the papers, and that the struggle in Tourmakeady, a struggle for the souls and survival of the catholic population was national news and  that Lavelle was leading a struggle against the Irish Church Missions which required full support from all Irish Catholics. The Protestant Mission countered this argument by saying that “since that gentleman’s arrival (Fr. Lavelle) in Tourmakeady, the newspapers have had to record, day after day, acts of violence on the part of the people, and violent language on the part of the of the priest”. The violence, including a threat to shoot Lavelle by Richard Goodison, a missionary at Aasleagh, near Leenane, led to the establishment of four new police stations in the area. Tensions, already running high between the opposing sides, were brought to a head in January 1860 with the murder of Alexander Harvison, a Protestant employee of Bishop Plunkett from County Monaghant.