John Lynch (bishop of Elphin)

John Fitzjames Lynch was an Irish Anglican bishop at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth. ^[1]

Lynch was born in Galway^[2] and educated at New Inn Hall, Oxford. He was Rector of Littleton-upon-Severn in 1561; and Canon of Wells in 1564. He was Bishop of Elphin^[3] from 1583 until his resignation on 19 August 1611, following his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith.^[4][5]

He had greatly impoverished his see by selling off property, but his successor as bishop, Edward King, restored it to its former prosperity.

Lynch is mentioned in the Annals of Loch Cé (written by Catholic clergy) for 1588:

There was a wicked, heretical, bishop in Oilfinn [Elphin]; and God performed great miracles upon him. And his place of residence was in the Grainsech of Machaire-riabhach [Maghereagh]; and a shower of snow was shed for him, and a wild apple was not larger than each stone of it; and not a grain was left in his town; and it was with shovels the snow was removed from the houses; and it was in the middle month of summer that shower fell.^[6]

The midwinter snowfall was more likely a symptom of the ongoing Little Ice Age.^[7]

References

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1. Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I., eds. (1986). Handbook of British Chronology (3rd, reprinted 2003 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56350-X.
2. Moody, T. W.; Martin, F. X.; Byrne, F. J., eds. (1984). Maps, Genealogies, Lists: A Companion to Irish History, Part II. A New History of Ireland. Vol. IX. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-821745-5.
3. "A Viceroy's Vindication?: Sir Henry Sidney's Memoir of Service in Ireland" Brady, C. (Ed) p125: Cork, Cork University Press, 2002 ISBN 1859181805
4. "Annals of Ireland, Ecclesiastical, Civil and Military" Graham, J. p97: Longon; G.Sidney; 1819
5. Cotton, Henry (1850). The Province of Connaught. Fasti Ecclesiae Hiberniae: The Succession of the Prelates and Members of the Cathedral Bodies of Ireland. Vol. 4. Dublin: Hodges and Smith.
6. "Part 12 of Annals of Loch Cé". Corpus of Electronic Texts. University College Cork.
7. Meigs, Samantha A. (1997). Reformations in Ireland: Tradition and Confessionalism, 1400–1690. Springer. ISBN 978-1-349-25710-2 – via Google Books.

Church of England titles
Preceded by Thomas Chester	Bishop of Elphin 1583–1611	Succeeded by Edward King