During the first half of the 18th century Franciscan life at Multyfarnham was as uneventful as the friars could make it. The friars could never forget that they had no legal status.
As far as parliamentary legislation could make them such, they were outcasts, declared enemies of the state. Consequently they had to move about quietly, performing their priestly duties as unobtrusively as possible.
Yet there is no evidence of open persecution. The friars had, of course, moments of extreme uneasiness. Sometimes a threatened descent of Jacobite’s, or an unaccountable paroxysm of anti-Catholic fury, would lead to a sudden enforcement of penal legislation and a renewed vigilance on the part of the authorities.
In 1731 the government, alarmed by the increasing number and strength of Irish Catholics, thought it necessary, “not only to disarm them, but to prevent by law the growth of Popery” and ordered High Sheriffs of counties and Chief Magistrates of towns to secure the return of the friaries and nunneries in their counties and towns. In the report of the High Sheriff of Co Westmeath, he wrote:
“I, Charles Lyons, Esq., High Sheriff of the County of Westmeath, in obedience to your Lordships order of Saturday, the sixth day of Nov. Inst. to me directed and hereunto annexed, have made diligent enquiry concerning all Friaries and Nunneries in the said County of Westmeath, and do find a reputed Friary to be at Multyfarnham, in the said county, in the said Friary are reputed to be the number of eight Friars at least, and that such number always belong to the said Friary, and that on the death of any of the said number one is frequently added in the room of such Friar deceased, and that there is no Nunnery or other Friary in the said county, which is humbly the return to your Lordships this 15th day of Nov, 1731.”
Thus, as far as the Sheriff of Co Westmeath could ascertain, there were at least eight friars residing at Multyfarnham in 1731 and that number was always maintained. But there is no evidence that the Sheriff took any steps to disperse the friars.
He may have, but on the other hand he may well have left them undisturbed for, like a Sheriff of a later day, Lyons was probably well aware that Multyfarnham was a “popish neighbourhood,” and no more than his successor, he was scarcely anxious to provoke the people’s anger!
Whatever the attitude of the Sheriff towards the friars, their activities were distasteful to one dignitary of the Church of Ireland. In a report from the dioceses of Kilmore and Ardagh, presented in 1731 to the Irish House of Lords by the Protestant Bishop, Dr Josiah Hort, his Lordship observed:
“That in Longford private Masses are said, every Sunday, by itinerant Friars, who are subsisted by that Means, and by clandestine Marriages, by which … Popery insensibly gains Ground; and further, that there are Multitudes of Monks and Friars who swarm from the Friary of Multyfarnham into that part of the Diocese of Ardagh that borders Co Westmeath.”
The Bishop’s report points to one important source of revenue for the friars – the remuneration given them for acting as chaplains to respectable families. In addition it gives a brief but revealing glimpse of the work done by the friars of Multyfarnham.
Among other duties, they were actively engaged in pastoral work in that part of the diocese of Ardagh that lies within a couple of miles of Multyfarnham, on the northern side of the river Inny and Lough Derravaragh.
It was an easy matter for them to cross the lake or river by boat and give the diocesan priests a helping hand. Of course one must discount the hyperbole of the Bishop’s graphic phrase; there were no “multitudes” of friars to “swarm” into Ardagh!
When the scare caused by the apprehensiveness of the authorities had passed away, the friary at Multyfarnham slipped from under the eye of officialdom, and silence again cloaked the activities of the friars. Not until thirteen years later did Multyfarnham again figure in official reports.
In 1744 the rumour of an intended invasion of England by the French caused a panic in government circles in Ireland and on February 28, led the Viceroy, the Duke of Devonshire to issue a “proclamation commanding the magistrates to hunt out all the clergy, and offering an additional reward for the apprehension and conviction of every priest and bishop.”
At once, James Smith, Sheriff for Co Westmeath, took steps to comply with the Viceroy’s injunction. In a report from Mullingar, dated March 17 1743, after alluding to some duties performed in Mullingar by the Dominican Bishop of the diocese Dr Stephen MacEgan, and after confessing to his failure to trace him, Smith stated:
“I further find that there is a Friary at Multyfarnham in said County. Inhabited by Peter Hughes, Francis Darcy, Delamer, Pettit, Gaynor, and humbly pray the Lord Lieutenant’s warrant for suppressing said Friary with a proper command of the standing army quartered at Mullingar. No civil power I can raise being sufficient it being a popish neighbourhood and no orders for arraying the militia of the said County.”
The Sheriff’s inquiries had brought him the names of fiver friars then living in the friary at Multyfarnham. And the list is most likely not complete, for it makes no mention of Father Andrew Nugent OFM, the then Guardian.
Most revealing is the Sheriff’s admission that without the help of armed military forces he could not disperse the friars, and for the reason that he feared the anger of the Catholic people of the neighbourhood. One could not ask for a greater tribute to the loyalty of the people of Multyfarnham district to the friars, or for greater evidence of the esteem in which the people held the friars.
The spirit of watchful loyalty on the part of the laity towards the friars, so warmly praised by Father Donagh Mooney OFM in 1617 was vigorous as ever in 1744.
After mentioning the names of other “popish priests” in the neighbourhood of Mullingar, the Sheriff concluded: “… that I have used my utmost efforts to have the said Bishop, Friars and priests apprehended but cannot.”
What efforts he made are not known. But that he took some positive steps to seize the friars is proved by his own words. No doubt the Multyfarnham community had to go into hiding again for a time, once again they enjoyed the protective hospitality of the good people of the locality.
The danger period, however, soon passed; for “the Duke, shocked by the loss of life, soon discountenanced its [the proclamation’s] execution.”
Another time of anxiety for the friars had passed. They were still at Multyfarnham friary.