“A List of the names of the Popish Parish Priests, as they were Register’d at a General Sessions of the Peace held at Ennis, in the County of Clare, the Eleventh day of July, 1704, and were since Return’d up to the Council Office, in Dublin, pursuant to a Clause in the late Act of Parliament, Intituled, “An Act for Registring the Popish Clergy.”
The registration act of 1703 ordered every Catholic priest in Ireland to report to the Clerk of the Peace at the next sitting of the Quarter Sessions court held in each county, and there to make a return of his name, address, age, parish, date and place of ordination, and the name of the bishop who ordained him. He had also to provide two sureties of £50. Registration was compulsory under pain of banishment.
The list of clergy was duly published in Dublin in 1705 by “Andrew Cook, Printer to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty, on the Blind-key.”
The lists were subsequently published in the Irish Catholic Directory of 1838 and in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in 1876.
The Clare list given here is taken from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record Volume XII, 1876, pages 340 – 347.
