Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lynch, James

1451477Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 34 — Lynch, James1893John Goldworth Alger

LYNCH, JAMES (1608?–1713), catholic archbishop of Tuam, born about 1608, doubtless in Ireland, was educated at the English College at Rome. The Propaganda in January 1669 appointed him archbishop of Tuam, and he was consecrated at Ghent 16 May 1669, but did not receive the pallium till 18 March 1671. Martin French, a renegade monk, having informed against him for violating the statute of præmunire, Lynch was arrested, and was to have been tried at Galway, but his counsel had the venue changed to Dublin. The informer turned penitent and did not appear at the trial. Lynch was consequently acquitted, but was forced to leave Ireland, and in 1675–6 he lived at Madrid. Poverty obliged him to apply to the Propaganda for permission to exercise episcopal functions in Spain, and he was appointed honorary chaplain to the Spanish king, Charles II. He returned to Tuam in 1685, but in 1691 settled at Paris. Honorary chaplain to James II, he resided chiefly at the Irish College, but paid frequent visits to his diocese. In 1710, being then described as about ninety, he applied for the appointment of his nephew Dominic Lynch as coadjutor, but Dominic died before any step was taken, and no coadjutor was nominated till the year of Lynch's death. He died at the Irish College in Paris, 29 Oct. 1713, leaving to the society a bequest for Galway students for the priesthood. He was buried at St. Paul's, Paris, and a marble bust was erected there, but the church has been demolished. The Lynch family of Barna, near Galway, have a portrait of him.

[Burke's Cath. Archbishops of Tuam, Dublin, 1882; Brady's Episc. Succession in England, &c., Rome, 1876–7 (both inaccurate as to date of death); Gaz. de France, 4 Nov. 1713 (which gives his age as ‘nearly 105;’ Moran's Spicilegium Ossoriense, Dublin, 1874–85; Bellesheim's Catholische Kirche in Ireland, Mainz, 1890.]

J. G. A.