No first name for John Gregg’s mother, Lahardan, Inchicronan (Crusheen)

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Sduddy
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No first name for John Gregg’s mother, Lahardan, Inchicronan (Crusheen)

Post by Sduddy » Tue Apr 27, 2021 10:02 am

Clare Freeman, Wed 29 May 1878:
John Cregg. The Lord Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, better known to a generation which is now passed away, as John Cregg, the name by which he desired to be remembered, has gone to his rest. Though his illness was not a protracted one, he had, for some months, exhibited the signs fo decay, and those who saw him in Dublin during the recent meeting of the General Synod, which he was unable to attend, felt that his end was very near. It would be difficult to point out a life distinguished by so much earnest, untiring labour, and by such a measure of varied and extended usefulness as that of the deceased prelate. Exceeding, by ten eventful years, the allotted span of “three score and ten,” he worked almost to the last with that indomitable energy which characterised him in his early youth, and the suppression of which, even for a period of needful repose, seemed to be, on his part an unwilling and painful effort. To that superabundant animal vigour which, when it is not the Lord of Misrule, is the surest augury of success in most undertakings he added an honest intensity of purpose, and his impulses, very kindly and self-sacrificing, were, at all times, under the control of true Christian principle. His public acts were guided by sound and deliberate judgment, and the pious enterprises to which he devoted himself gained no less from his practical and matured wisdom than from the indefatigable zeal with which he pursued them.
Born in Cappa, in the county of Clare, in the year 1798, he passed his boyhood among a primitive Irish-speaking population whose language he completely mastered and sometimes used with good effect in later life. Like many other distinguished Irishmen, John Gregg was the offspring of a mixed marriage. His father was a Protestant gentleman of the county Clare, and his mother was a Catholic, the daughter of William Fitzgerald, Esq, of Lahardin, in the same county. By the latter parent he was first cousin of the Right Honourable Vesey Fitzgerald, afterwards Lord Fitzgerald and Vesey. John, a younger son, was born in 1798. The father dying intestate and leaving but moderate means, which were quickly dissipated by his successors, John was obliged to make his own way in the world, and he elected to read for a sizarship in Trinity College. He kept this intention to himself, however, as his family wished him to enter the navy, in which profession they hoped the family interest would advance him. He seems to have been retarded in this design by the want of a competent classical teacher, for he was upwards of twenty before he presented himself at the sizarship examination. At the examination he succeeded not having a single friend or acquaintance within the College walls. He often said in after life that after the first year of his sizarship he was never without the command of a five pound note, his income being derived, as is usual with clever young collegians, from ‘grinding.’
In 1832 he obtained a 3rd classical scholarship, the first being won by Mr Samuel Greer, now Rector of Enniskillen, and the second by Hamilton Verchoyle, afterwards Bishop of Kilmore. He graduated with honours (1824) in company with James Henthorn Todd, George Sidney Smith, John Teleken, John McCaul, the Editor of ‘Horace,’ now Chancellor of Toronto University, Hamilton Verschoyle, and John Ryall, afterwards Vice-President of the Queen’s Cork. The first three became Fellows, and two of them lived to be Senior Fellows of the College. In the last year of his scholarship his cousin, Vesey Fitzgerald, canvassed him to vote for the Right Hon John Wilson Croker, Secretary of the Admiralty, but met with a curt refusal, as Gregg thought that Fitzgerald had neglected him after his father’s death. It appears that the refusal did not cost him his distinguished cousin’s good will, for it was Fitzgerald who obtained for him his first church living. Gregg was one of the most athletic of the College students of his time, and was noted for his jumping backward and forward the ha-ha of twenty-one feet, that in those days bounded a portion of the College Park [*]. His first pastoral charge was in St Paul’s, Portarlington, where his stay was not long, his promotion soon following (in the year 1828) to the small living in Kilsallaghan, near Swords, in the county of Dublin.
* At first I thought that he had jumped backwards, but, on second thoughts, I think he must have jumped over and back.

Wikipedia entry for John Gregg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Greg ... p_of_Cork)

This piece from the Cork Echo includes an interesting photograph taken in 1865: https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-40135733.html

Sheila

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