Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Devany, Cornelius
O'DEVANY or O'DUANE, CORNELIUS (1533–1612), called in Irish Conchobhar O'Duibheannaigh, Roman catholic bishop of Down and Connor, born in 1533, a native of Ulster, became at an early age a member of the order of St. Francis at the convent in Donegal. After having for some years officiated zealously as a priest in his native district, O'Devany, on 27 April 1582, was appointed to the vacant bishopric of Down and Connor, at the instance of the cardinal of Sens, and received episcopal consecration at Rome. On his return to Ireland he endeavoured, notwithstanding the existing laws, to perform his functions as a Roman catholic bishop, and was consequently arrested, but succeeded in effecting his escape. O'Devany in 1587 took part in an ecclesiastical meeting in the diocese of Clogher, at which the decrees of the council of Trent were promulgated. Redmond O'Gallagher, vice-primate of Ireland, in July 1588 entrusted to O'Devany temporary authority in spiritual affairs under permission from Rome.
O'Devany, having been arrested a second time, was committed to prison in Dublin Castle, where he suffered much from cold, noisomeness, and hunger. In October 1588 the lord-deputy, in a letter to Burghley, described O'Devany as a ‘most pestilent and dangerous member, fit to be cut off,’ ‘an obstinate enemy to God,’ and ‘a rank traitor to her majesty.’
From the prison in Dublin Castle O'Devany in November 1590 addressed a petition to the lord-deputy, representing that he had been committed ‘concerning matters of religion,’ that he was ‘ready to starve for want of food,’ and averring that, ‘if set at liberty to go and live among his poor friends, he would not again transgress her majesty's proceedings in all causes of religion.’ A warrant for the liberation of O'Devany was issued at Dublin on 16 Nov. 1590, on the ground that he had sworn to behave himself as a dutiful subject, and had found sureties to appear before the queen's commissioners for ecclesiastical causes when ‘thereunto admonished.’ On his return to Ulster O'Devany was befriended by Cormac O'Neill, brother of the Earl of Tyrone, and in 1591 he was one of the bishops in Ireland to whom spiritual powers of special nature were delegated by Cardinal Allen. O'Devany, it was said, visited Italy and Spain in connection with affairs of the Earl of Tyrone, and he compiled a catalogue of persons who had suffered in Ireland for adherence to the catholic religion, entitled ‘Index Martyrialis’ (Gent. Mag. 1832, i. 404).
George Montgomery, protestant bishop of Derry, in 1608 urged the government at Dublin to take measures for the restraint of O'Devany, whom he described as ‘obstinate and dangerous,’ adding that he would do much evil if ‘permitted to range.’ An inquisition at Newry on 15 Jan. 1611–12 made a return that O'Devany had, in the county of Down and elsewhere, conspired with and abetted Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone [q. v.], in treasonable acts against Queen Elizabeth in 1601–2. O'Devany was arrested in June 1611, while in the act of administering confirmation to young persons in a private house. He was again imprisoned in Dublin Castle, and while there David Roth [q. v.], under date of 17 Dec. 1611, addressed to him from the continent a Latin discourse, entitled ‘Epistola parænetica.’
In January 1611–12 O'Devany was put on his trial for treason in the court of king's bench, Dublin. He denied the acts for which he was arraigned, but the jury returned a verdict against him, and, under the name of ‘Connoghor O'Devenne,’ he was sentenced to be hanged, disembowelled, decapitated, and quartered. This sentence was carried out at the place of public execution at Dublin on 11 Feb. 1612, in presence of a large concourse of people. Several Roman catholics regarded O'Devany in the light of a martyr, and secured relics of him; one of these, a piece of linen tinged with his blood, is preserved at Rome. Observations on the execution and circumstances connected with it were published at London in 1612 by Barnaby Rich, in his tractate entitled ‘A Catholicke Conference,’ which may be contrasted with the notices of the same matters published at Lisbon in 1621 by Philip O'Sullivan-Beare, in his ‘Historiæ Catholicæ Iberniæ Compendium.’ Roth's discourse addressed to O'Devany, above mentioned, appeared in the second part of ‘Analecta Sacra,’ published at Cologne in 1617. The third portion of ‘Analecta,’ issued in 1619, contained a notice of O'Devany, whose catalogue of martyrs appears to have been then in Roth's possession.
[Archives of Franciscans, Ireland; Records of King's Bench, Dublin; Roth's Analecta Sacra, 1617, 1619, 1884; State Papers, Elizabeth and James I; Annals of the Four Masters, 1848; Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, 1650; Brady's Episcopal Succession, 1876; Letters of Cardinal Allen, 1882; Moran's Spicilegium Ossoriense, i. 123, &c.; Ussher's Works, ed. Elrington, ii. 526, 618; Lenihan's Limerick, p. 136; Hatfield MSS. iv. 565; Bagwell's Ireland under the Tudors, iii. 466; Gent. Mag. 1832, i. 404.]