1814 - 1886Daniel O'Connell, always cautious in questions of title, was fully satisfied that the Castle Browne property was duly processed. Negotiations for the purchase of Castle Browne had begun six months earlier in the autumn of 1813. Long before they were completed, a hue and cry began to be raised. John Gillard, writing in the Hibernian Magazine (18 November 1813), raised the alarm:
'The maginificent edifice of Castle Browne in the county of Kildare, which cost over £26,000 in building, has been purchased by a party of Jesuits for £16,000. Ireland now stands in imminent danger. If Popery succeeds, our fairest plains will once more witness days worthy to rank with those of bloody Mary, and the walls of Dublin shall again become the lamentable bulwarks against popish treachery and massacre.'
The Speaker of the United Kingdom House of Commons, Charles Abbot, later Lord Colchester, had constituted himself leader of the Anti-Catholic lobby in England. Robert Peel, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, wrote to him on 13 February 1814:
'I have reason to believe that the treaty for the purchase of Castle Browne, which was suspended, is now renewed, but no settlement has been made.'
Hansard recorded in full detail a debate in the House of Commons on 17 May 1814 initiated by Sir John Cox Hippsely who asserted that it had come to his knowledge that nearly £30,000 had been remitted from Rome to Ireland for the purpose of purchasing lands. Sir Henry Parnell told the House that Mr. Kenney had put into his hands the prospectus of his establishment: the whole object which it aimed at was neither more nor less than the education of young persons; it did not even exclude those of the Protestant religion. Sir Henry Newport, MP for Waterford, said that he had looked into the statute book and could not see what objection could be raised against the conduct of Mr Kenney. Replying to the debate, Robert Peel told the Commons that he had interviewed Mr Kenney and had received from him the prospectus of his school. The only point Kenney refused to divulge was how he came by the money, which he asserted, was his private property. Peel told him, that he must not be surprised if the same feeling which had induced the British Government to confiscate the property of the Jesuits in Canada should induce them at least to watch with the utmost diligence and suspicion an institution established and superintended by one of the Order, supported by funds, the origin and nature of which were totally unaccounted for.
The debate is best summed up in an entry in Charles Abbot's Diary under the date 23 May 1814:
Peel called by appointment. We talked over the foundation of the school at Clongowes [sic] Wood, late Castle Browne, Kenney's conversation with him asserting the £16,000 to be his own funds, though how obtained he refused to disclose; and that when his vow of poverty was objected to him in bar of his being the proprietor of such funds, he said his vow was only simple, not solemn. To all questions he generally answered by putting some other questions instead of giving an affirmative or negative.
On 18 May 1814 Clongowes Wood College, received its first pupil, James MacLorinan, of Dublin. His parents were drapers. |