On this day in 1848, Young Irelander Fr John Kenyon exhorted a large crowd that had gathered in Templederry to gather arms for revolt against British rule.
Kenyon, an ardent Nationalist and one of the Young Irelander’s most vocal insurrectionists, was suspended from his clerical functions some weeks later.
John Kenyon was born at Thomond Gate, Limerick city in 1812. He was ordained in 1835 and by 1839 was curate in Kilmore Parish near Nenagh. A strong supporter of the temperance movement, in May 1841 he addressed a large meeting in honour of Fr Theobald Mathew at Toomevara. In December 1842, he was appointed curate of Meenagh parish, now known as Templederry. His lively personality, keen intellect, and eccentrically playful wit made him a popular local figure.
A staunch nationalist, he joined the Repeal Association in 1843 and identified with the Young Ireland party. He was much valued by the Young Irelanders as one of their few well-known clerical supporters. He was critical of Daniel O’ Connell and his reliance on ‘moral force’, which he dismissed as ‘this filthy caricature of virtue – this vile profanation of holy patriotism’. Kenyon, writing in The Nation newspaper, shocked nationalist opinion by describing O’Connell shortly after his death in 1847 as an unprincipled huckster ‘who patronised liars, parasites, and bullies’ and whose death ‘was no loss whatever’ to Ireland. Unsurprisingly this caused come controversy amongst O’Connellites and Kenyon’s presence in Limerick shortly afterwards provoked a riot from which he had to be rescued.
In that same newspaper the previous year, Kenyon had published a lengthy article stating his opposition to unconditional pacifism. Kenyon gravitated towards confederate extremists such as John Mitchel, who became a close friend, and from February 1848 wrote regularly for Mitchel's revolutionary United Irishman. After his speech in Templederry in April 1848, he was suspended by Bishop Kennedy of Killaloe and told that he would only be reinstated if he swore not to take the initiative in any rebellion. It seems that Kenyon accepted these terms and in July of that year, he refused to assist John Blake Dillon and Thomas Francis Meagher plan for a rebellion when they visited Templederry.
His Young Ireland colleagues showed surprisingly little ill-will towards him for his failure to match words with deeds, and afterwards he was, despite everything, popularly regarded as the ‘patriot priest’ of 1848. Kenyon later maintained that had the rising been properly organised he would have readily joined, and persuaded his parishioners to do likewise.
Post 1848, Kenyon was still involved in nationalist politics but his relationship with the IRB, which had been founded by James Stephens, was poisoned when he was replaced as speaker for the graveside oration at Thomas Clarke Luby’s funeral. Moreover, Kenyon dismissed what he saw as the futility of revolutionary struggle without the intervention of friendly foreign powers, maintaining that the Irish people had shown themselves incapable of achieving their own freedom in 1848.
Kenyon was made Parish priest in Templederry in 1860. He died in 1868 and is buried in Templederry. Charles Gavan Duffy wrote of him: ‘He was a man greatly, but unevenly gifted. With more worldly wisdom he might have been a Swift; with more spirituality and fidelity he might, perhaps, have been a Savonarola’.
Sources:
https://www.dib.ie/biography/kenyon-john-a4512
https://www.catholicireland.net/father-john-kenyon-the-rebel-priest/
