Life
1594-1663; ed. Sidney Sussex Coll., Cambridge; Lord Wentworth’s chaplain in Ireland, 1633; bishop of Derry, 1634; impeached and imprisoned for vigorous opposition to dissenters, but freed by efforts of Ussher, 1641;
assisted royalists in England, 1644; moved to continent, 1644; issued Vindication of the Churches of England and Ireland (1647), a comparatively modern work which omits the traditional treatment of the papacy as Anti-Christ;
returned to Ireland, 1648-49, back to continent; archbishop of Armagh, 1661; speaker in Irish House of Lords, 1661; enforced conformity with moderation; Works, 1676. ODNB WJM
[ top ]
Criticism
John Vesey, Life of Archbishop Bramhall Prefixed to His Works (Dublin 1676; rep. Oxford 1842-45); W. a. Phillips, ed., History of the Church of Ireland, 3 vols. (OUP 1933-34); John McCaffrey, ‘John Bramhall and the Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland 1633-1641’ (Cambridge Univ. PhD Diss. 1996), Chap. 2. [cited in McCaffrey, ‘St Patrick for the Church of Ireland: James Ussher’s Discourse’, in Irish Studies Review, April 1998, pp.87-101, ftn., p.100].
[ top ]