Bramhall

Bramhall, JOHN, a great anti-Puritan Irish prelate, was born in 1594, and educated at Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge. He was already sub-dean of Ripon, and on the road to high preferment when he went to Ireland as Wentworth's chaplain in 1633. He soon became Archdeacon of Meath, and was consecrated Bishop of Derry in 1634. Bramhall's intolerance roused the wrath of the stubborn Scotch settlers in his diocese, and ruined the king's cause in Ulster. When the Civil War broke out, for safety's sake he crossed to England, but the royalist disasters soon drove him to the Continent. At Paris, he argued with Hobbes on necessity and the freedom of the will, but the dogmatic bishop was no match save in his own opinion for that subtlest of sceptics. The Restoration gave him the metropolitan see of Armagh, which he filled till his death in 1663. Bramhall closely imitated Laud in policy, and even resembled him in person, but was far his inferior in intellect. Not strong but merely obstinate in purpose, the so-called Athanasius of Ireland by his impolitic intolerance sealed the doom of Episcopalian supremacy in Ulster. His collected writings have slumbered since their publication in 1677.