Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
By 1620 he had come to the attention of the king, and was
appointed Bishop of Meath, a diocese north of Dublin. His rise in the
ecclesiastical hierarchy in Ireland was remarkable and he was trans-
lated to the archbishopric of Armagh four years later. Ussher's pri-
macy overlapped with a long period of considerable unrest in Ireland.
In 1566 the city of Armagh and its cathedral had been sacked and
burned by Hugh O'Neill and his followers, so Ussher lived in the
town of Drogheda some thirty miles southeast. His daily routine
consisted of taking prayers four times and he preached every Sunday.
This sermon was later repeated by one of his chaplains to Ussher's
servants and any of the local townspeople who cared to attend. When
he was not writing and thinking, Ussher was a keen conversationalist,
and enjoyed riding and walking. He was married to the daughter of
Luke Challoner, one of his university colleagues, and had several
children. In 1640 he and his family were visiting England, and the
rebellion in Ireland that flared up the following year forced them to
remain: Ussher never returned to Ireland, and he spent the remainder
of his life in a peripatetic existence in England.
The eminence and standing that this cleric had in England is
borne out by the fact that on Ussher's death, on 21March 1656 at Lady
Peterborough's house in Reigate, Cromwell himself ordered that he be
buried in St Paul's Chapel in Westminster Abbey and granted his
family £200 for funeral expenses. The moving and solemn occasion
was attended by so many mourners and members of the nobility and
gentry that a military guard had to be employed to ensure their safety.
As would be expected the funeral was conducted according to the
rites of the Church of England, but this was a unique occasion, in
that it was the only time during the Commonwealth that this form of
service was used at Westminster Abbey. Following the funeral Ussher
was laid in an unmarked grave close to his old tutor Sir James
Fullerton (d. 1631) who, like the archbishop, had been a Fellow of
Trinity College Dublin.
Ussher was a scholar of the highest calibre. He published
numerous topics on theology and history including Britannicarum
