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22
BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
18th annual edition
Baroque Drelincourt monument in the north aisle
perfect symmetry of form, slightly veiled
beneath its flowing folds. The features
are strongly expressive of intelligence,
mildness and benevolence, and were
peculiarly admired, by Dr. Drelincourt’s
contemporaries, for the strong
resemblance which they bore to the
original. The whole monument is, indeed,
an exquisite piece of workmanship,
perfected by the hand of Taste,
usque ad
unguem
.� On the front of the sarcophagus
[is an] appropriate inscription.⁴
Behind the figure of Drelincourt is a tall slab
of marble on which is carved a fulsome Latin
inscription giving an account of Drelincourt’s
history and background and mentioning the
Ormond connection, among much else.
The Stuart monument
This is now in the north aisle, and is a
distinguished work of Francis Leggatt Chantrey
(1781–1841). Born in Jordanthorpe, Norton,
near Sheffield,
5
young Chantrey had only a
rudimentary education, but around 1808 he
determined to concentrate on sculpture and
moved permanently to London. He soon
achieved fame, and King George III sat for him
in 1809: this royal patronage marked the start
of an illustrious and prolific professional life.
In 1809 too, he married his cousin, Mary Anne
Wale, who brought a substantial dowry to the
marriage, and his career took off at a spectacular
pace. Chantrey’s standing led King William IV to
confer a knighthood on him in 1835, and when
he died the sculptor left a considerable fortune.
His splendid monument in Armagh,
a serene masterpiece of Neo-Classicism,
commemorates William Stuart (1755–1822),
fifth son of John Stuart (3rd Earl of Bute and
prime minister from 1761 to 1763) and his
wife, Mary Wortley Montagu (only daughter
of Edward Wortley Montagu and Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu, the celebrated letter-writer,
who introduced inoculation against smallpox
to Britain in 1721). William Stuart was ordained
in 1779, and 1793 saw his appointment as
Bishop of St David’s. His homilies were greatly
admired by King George III, and in July 1800
he received a request from the King to consider
assumption to the office of Primate of Ireland
and was duly translated to the See of Armagh.
As archbishop, Stuart was indiscreetly critical
of his fellow-bishops, largely because of their
failure to promote education. He chaired the
Irish Board of Education Inquiry and under
his ægis that organisation issued 14 influential
reports between 1809 and 1813. He also
oversaw a poorly conceived ‘restoration’ and
re-ordering of the cathedral, which had to be
comprehensively unpicked and remedied some
25 years later. Stuart had an unfortunate and
premature death owing to a mix-up between a
bottle of embrocation and one of laudanum.
As far as is known, Chantrey carved three
memorials that were erected in Ireland. Apart
from that to Archbishop Stuart, he produced
the funerary monuments of John James
Maxwell (2nd Earl of Farnham) in Urney Parish
Church, Cavan (1826), and of Major-General
Sir Denis Pack in Kilkenny Cathedral (1828).
Stuart’s monument was ordered in 1824 and
completed in 1826: it cost a thousand guineas,
then a very considerable sum. In addition,
there was the expense of transporting it to
Armagh, where it was originally erected in June
1827. Rennison recorded that ‘Mr Chantrey’s
Man’ had arrived to do the work,
6
and that a
place for the monument had been ‘fixed on’.
7
The place selected was in the south aisle,
so the figure of the archbishop originally faced
west. Chantrey’s completed work attracted
some criticism: the ‘stiffness of the arm or rather
shoulder which adjoins the wall’ was noted,
for example.
8
William Makepeace Thackeray,
however, visited Armagh in 1842 when
collecting material for his Irish Sketch Book and
singled out the ‘beautiful’ Stuart monument
for praise, finding the cathedral as a whole ‘as
neat and trim as a lady’s drawing-room’.
9
Primate Stuart had presided over some very
curious alterations in 1802, including the placing
of an altar at the west end of the nave,
10
but by
the late 1830s such travesties of ecclesiastical
arrangements were seen as unacceptable.
However, the Cathedral Board Vestry Meetings
also reveal that there was some re-ordering
and shifting of positions of monuments in the
1880s.
11
In 1886
12
Alexander James Beresford
Beresford Hope (1820–87, politician, author,
ecclesiologist, and architectural pundit) wrote
a letter recommending the appointment of the
architect Richard Herbert Carpenter (1841–93,
son of the early Gothic Revivalist Richard
Cromwell Carpenter [1812–55])
13
to carry out
new works of restoration and re-ordering.
Carpenter was at that time in partnership with
Benjamin Ingelow (d1925), and Beresford Hope