Life
(?1756-?1801); born in Muckerstaff, Granard, Co. Longford; educ. Salamanca for the priesthood; nominally assigned to the Augustine priory in Drogheda to maintain the title during Penal Days; trans. Augustine’s Meditations (1798), ded. to Richard Reilly, Catholic Archb. of Armagh; preached widely under auspices of diocesan churches in Dublin, Meath and Wicklow; joined the United Irishman in Easter 1797, being sworn in by Franciscan Friars Patrick Duffy and James Macartan; helped prepare for the proposed attack on Dublin in conjunction with Gen. John Holt; arrested by Rathdrum Yeomanry and interrogated by Capt. John Gifford in Kilmainham, extracting information about Drogheda members of the Society (without securing convictions); escaped from prison with a ladder and afterwards unheard of.
Criticism
See Dáire Keogh, ‘“The Most Dangerous villain in society”: Fr. John Martin’s mission to the United Irishmen in Wicklow in 1798’, in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (1992), pp.115-35.
Reference
See Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin: RIA 2009) - available online. There is entry in DNB (UK).
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