Life
1806-1902 [William Dool Killen]; b. Ballymena, Co. Antrim; ed. Belfast Academical Inst.; ord. Presbyterian minister, Raphoe, Co. Donegal, 1829; Prof. Church History, Presbyterian College, Belfast, during forty-eight years; President of Presbyterian College, 1869; hon. doctorates from Univ. of Glasgow; Reminiscences of a Long Life (1901); The Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, 2 vols; and History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, 3 vols., commenced by James Seaton Reid. DUB
[ top ]
Works
[ed.] Rev. John Mackenzie, [Memorials of] The Siege of Derry: an edition of his writings including his Narrative and its vindication [i.e., Champion Foyl’d], with intro. and notes by W. D. Killen (Belfast 1861). Killen was a successor to his ministry in Cookstown.
[ top ]
Commentary
Terence Brown, The Whole Protestant Community: The Making of a Historical Myth [Field Day Pamphlets, No. 7] (Derry: Field Day 1985), p.13 [ftn.4]: In the nineteenth-century W. D. Killen, who completed J. S. Reid’s monumental History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (1833 & 1867) attempted to prove that presbyterians had played only a small part in the Rebellion.’ Brown notes that John M. Barklay (challenge and Conflict: Essays in Irish Presbyterian History and Doctrine, Antrim 1981) acceptes J. B. Woodburn’s view (Ulster Scot, 1914) that they were considerably implicated in what Killen had termed “the revolutionary mania”.
[ top ]
References
Belfast Public Library holds, History of Presbyterian Congregations in Ireland (1886); Memorials of the Siege of Derry (1861); Reminiscences of a Long Life (1901) [autob]; Why Should Prelacy Dominate in Ireland (1868).
Notes
Anthony Alcock, Understanding Ulster (Lurgan: Ulster Society [Northern Whig] 1994), cites Killen’s Ecclesiastical History.
[ top ]