Life
[?]-1798 [vars. O’Coigly; Quigley]; ord. 1785, Armagh; spent several years in Paris; returned to Armagh diocese; associated with Defenders and United Irishmen and was active in promoting friendly relations with Presbyterians of Antrim and Down, 1791-93; travelled to Britain and Paris, where he was involved with the United Britons and with Tandy; arrested Margate, Feb. 1798, preparing to cross to France with Arthur O’Connor and Benjamin Binns; executed by hanging, Pennington Heath.
Works
Daire Keogh, A Patriot Priest: A Life of Reverend James Coigly (Cork UP 1998), 96pp.; note undated Life, infra. BIBL, Denis Carroll, Unusual Suspects: Twelve Radical Clergymen (Dublin: Columba Press 1998); also Réamoinn Ó Muirí, study of Fr. Coigly in Liam Swords, ed., Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter: The Clergy and 1798 (Columba Press 1997).
Commentary
Kevin Whelan, ‘Origins of the Orange Order’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 2, 2 (Spring/Summer 1996), pp.19-36: refers to James Quigley’s account, in Life [n.d.], of how he tried ‘to reconcile the parties’ in Armagh ‘but was discourse by several leading gentlemen of the county who have often told me at their tables that it was of great utility to the Irish government that such religious disputes should exist between Dissenters and Catholics’; further describes the Orange Order as ‘Church and king’ mob deliberately created to ‘break the Catholic/Presbyterian alliance which it was much feared might end up on a union of all parties against the said Beresford and co.’ (Life, p.14; Whelan, p.31.) QRY: is the is the same, and if so, when was the Life written?
References
Not cited in Dictionary of National Biography.
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