Lancelot Bulkeley


Lancelot Bulkeley was a Welsh archbishop of Dublin.

Life

He was the eleventh and youngest son of Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris and Cheadle, but the eldest by his second wife, Agnes, daughter of Thomas Needham of Stenton. He was thus half-brother of Sir Richard Bulkeley. His parents marriage was unhappy: his mother was unfaithful to his father, and his suden death led to an accusation by his brother that she had murdered him. He entered at the beginning of 1587, as a commoner, Brasenose College, Oxford, where he proceeded B.A.; he afterwards moved to St. Edmund Hall, where he took his M.A. degree in 1593. On 13 November of the same year he was ordained deacon by Hugh Bellot, bishop of Bangor.
Some years later he became Archdeacon of Dublin, and he was promoted to its see in 1619. Subsequently, he was named by James I a member of the Privy Council. He revived the controversy regarding the primacy of Ireland, and on the question being submitted to Thomas Wentworth, Lord Deputy of Ireland, the precedency was given to the Archbishop of Armagh. At Christmas 1628 he was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to prohibit the public celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass. When the news reached the city there was a large scale riot, and a mob stoned Bulkeley, who had to seek refuge in a private house; to his outrage, Dublin Corporation refused to take any steps to assist him and refused entry to the town to the troops sent by the Crown to quell the riot.
Bulkeley was one of the Council who in 1646 issued a proclamation confirming the peace treaty concluded in that month between the Marquis of Ormonde and the Roman Catholics. On 8 March 1649 it was decreed that all honours, castles, etc. belonging to the archbishopric of Dublin should be vested in General Henry Ireton, president of Munster, and Bulkeley was committed to prison for resisting the act passed by the English Parliament in 1647, prohibiting the use of the Book of Common Prayer.
The archbishop died at Tallaght on 8 September 1650, in his eighty-second year, and was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin under the communion-table.
He was the author of a pamphlet, Proposals for sending back the Nobility and Gentry of Ireland.

Marriage & children

By his wife Alice, daughter of Roland Bulkeley of Conwy, he had at least seven children: William, Richard, Margaret, Alice, Dorothy, Mary and Grizel. William was the father of Sir Richard Bulkeley, 1st Baronet.