This brief notice of the Archbishop scarcely made any impression on my mind beyond a mere recollection of the circumstance, when a Cornish gentleman informed me that he had observed a monument to this Prelate in the Cathedral at Dublin. I then took the liberty of applying, through Mr. Dawson, Member for the County of Londonderry, to his brother the Dean of St. Patrick’s, who not only gave me every information and reference that is known to exist, but also a drawing of the monument, of which I have sent a wood engraving.—Since this was engraved, I
have seen a tracing from an old drawing in the possession of Sir William Betham, Ulster King at Arms, which shows that the sides of the original altar-tomb were adorned with trefoil-headed arches rising from short pillars.
It appears that few records are extant of the Prelates and Dignitaries of Dublin prior to the Reformation, in places where they might most reasonably have been expected to be found; and the monument itself would have perished but for the care and attention of the celebrated Doctor Jonathan Swift, who, with the Chapter, exactly a hundred years ago, rescued it from a dilapidated chapel, and carried the monument to its present situation in the Cathedral.
Michael Tregury attained his reputation for learning at the University of Oxford. He was Junior Proctor in the year 1434, under which Anthony Wood gives the following notice of him in his “Fasti.” He “was now Fellow of Exeter College, and about these times Principal of several Halls successively that stood near to the said College. But the King, having a special respect for him (being now accounted the utmost ornament of the University), made him Prefect or Governor of [the College at] Caen in Normandy, lately erected by King Henry the Fifth of England; which office he performing with singular applause, became at length, through divers preferments (of which the Deanery of St. Michael of Pencryche[16] was one) Archbishop of Dublin in Ireland.”
The foundation of the College or University of Caen, is again mentioned by Wood in his Annals, under 1417. In consequence, he says, of discontents regarding preferment and tithes, “the corruptness of provisions, and especially the wars between England and France, many dispersed themselves to other places. And because Normandy, Angiers, Poyctou,
Aquitaine, Bretagne, Gascoigne, and other places that were subject to the Crown of England, could not for that reason exercise their Scholastical Arts at Paris publicly and without murmurings, they receded to Caen in Normandy,[17] and studied there, which place Henry the Fifth, of England, made an University, causing one Michael Tregorie, an Oxford Doctor, sometime Fellow of Exeter College, to be governor and reader there, to the end that the doctrine of the University of Oxford might dilate itself and take root in those parts.”
The following memoir is extracted from Ware’s History of Ireland, vol. I. p. 359:
“Before the close of the same year (1449), Michael Tregury, a native of Cornwall, and Doctor of Divinity of the University of Oxford, was consecrated Archbishop of this See. He was a man of such great eminence for learning and wisdom, that in the year 1418, King Henry the Fifth invited him over to Caen in Normandy, to take upon him the government of a College, which that Monarch had then founded in the said city; to whom he joined, out of the Mendicant Friars, learned professors in all sciences.[18] There he is said to have discharged the trust committed to him with great applause, both by his public prelections and writings. A catalogue of his works may be seen in Bale and Pits. At last, upon the death of Talbot in 1449, he was promoted to this See by a papal provision, and was the same year, on the 10th of February (English style), restored to the temporalities by King Henry the Sixth, whose Chaplain he was: [But was obliged to submit himself to the King’s favour, and renounce every clause in his Bull prejudicial to the Crown.[19]] He was called into the Privy Council immediately, and had twenty pounds per annum[20]
granted him by the King, pro sano consilio, for giving good counsel, as his predecessors, Archbishops of Dublin, who were of the Council, had; and in 1453 King Henry the Sixth, for securing an arrear of two years and a half, and the growing salary, granted him a custodium on the manor of Tassagard, and the town of Ballachise, parcel thereof, to continue during the time he should be Archbishop of Dublin.[21]
“In certain Annals ascribed to Dudley Firbisse, there is a mention made under the year 1453, that an Archbishop of Dublin was taken prisoner at sea. I must leave the passage to the credit of the Annalist, not having met any hint of it elsewhere. There is extant in the Black Book of the Archbishop of Dublin (p. 82), a copy of a Bull of Pope Pius the Second, dated the 23d of November 1462, and directed to the Bishop and Archdeaconry of Ossory, commanding them to pronounce excommunicated, Geofrey Harold, Thomas and Edmund his sons, Patrick Birne, Thady Sheriff, Thomas Becagh, Robert Burnell, and other laymen of the city and diocese of Dublin, for laying violent hands on this Prelate, and committing him to prison; and that they should keep them under excommunication until they went to Rome for absolution, with the testimonials of the Bishop and Archdeacon. The reason of this insult is no where mentioned, that I can find. He repaired the manor house of Tawlaght, and died there in a very advanced age, on the 21st of December 1471; having governed this See about twenty-two years. His remains were conveyed to Dublin, attended by the clergy and citizens, and buried in St. Patrick’s Church, near St. Stephen’s altar [as he had directed by his will], where heretofore might have been seen a specious monument, adorned