In late summer 1835, Jane arrived at the Achill Mission colony in Dugort, just a year after the Nangles had taken up residence there. She confronted an impressive spectacle: a row of slated two-storey houses on the side of a mountain, ten acres of cultivated land producing potatoes and other crops, eight cabins under construction for colony converts – an oasis of development in the midst of the prevailing deprivation and squalor across the island. It was an impressive sight indeed to a visitor who passionately valued improvement and education.
She had spent several months the previous year separated from her husband and travelling on the Nile with a Prussian missionary, Johann Lieder, giving rise to innuendo of a romantic affair. On returning to England, she was unwell, perhaps pining for her exotic Nile travelling companion, and a trip to Ireland may have been a welcome diversion. In contrast to her middle-aged, stout, balding, explorer husband Sir John, Jane Franklin, then in her early forties, exuded the vibrant energy of youth. She was slim, graceful and elegant, amiable and charming, her expressive face framed by curly hair. But she was also sturdy and adventurous, strong and practical, one who described herself as a low-church, ‘no-frills Protestant’.1
On their way to Achill the visitors received a favourable report about Edward Nangle’s mission from an unlikely source. Father Lyons, Catholic dean of Killala, County Mayo, told them: ‘He is an excellent man and he is doing a great deal of good to the poor people of Achill.’ The difficult journey to the island would likely have excited the adventurous Jane: ‘At Ballycroy we were detained four days by a hurricane, living all this time in the coastguard watch-house and the cottage of the chief boatman’, before crossing by galley across dangerous waters to Achill’s Bullsmouth.
Edward, Eliza and Grace Warner hosted Jane and her husband at their Dugort home where they dined on vegetables and potatoes from the Nangle kitchen garden. While the single decanter of wine disappeared quickly from the table at the end of the meal, Edward apologised for the deficiency and produced a bottle of whiskey for the guests. Jane could see how harsh the year had been for Eliza: her first son, the child she had carried in her womb through a harsh and difficult Achill winter, had died in April before her milk came in, surviving for just two days. Edward, she learned, had buried the infant with his own hands in the small enclosed cemetery behind the mission buildings on the mountain slope. In the years ahead, it would become a communal Nangle burial place.
What impression did Edward Nangle make? To Jane, he was a tall, thin, pale, dark man with finely formed features, wearing such a mild pensive expression ‘that you would think he could not utter a harsh word, or raise his voice beyond the breathings of a prayer’. However, she could detect that he was driven by an overwhelming force, willing to persevere in his mission through fatigue, ill health, persecution and calumny in pursuit of his goals. He clearly believed that thousands of his deluded countrymen were perishing around him in their sins and errors and that it was his God-given duty to bring the true faith to these people.
‘Like another Luther is Mr Nangle in Achill,’ she observed, instinctively supportive of the mission’s work in opposing the ‘spiritual tyranny’ of Catholicism. ‘I have seen missionaries in many countries but never one so pure and high-minded as Mr Nangle.’
Jane sympathised with the position of Eliza and her sister: in her view, two excellent, gentle and zealous women who had renounced the luxuries to which they had been accustomed and devoted their energies to the island mission, while understandably apprehensive at the violence being directed at the colony. She heard that, during Edward’s absences, the chief officer of the coastguard, Francis Reynolds, came to the colony each night ‘to sit up with Mr Nangle’s family and be in readiness to protect them in case of attack or insult’.2 Grace Warner appeared to be in awe of her brother-in-law, telling Jane that, despite suffering poor health, Edward was scrupulous in economising the mission’s funds, seeking few comforts for himself.
In a remarkable coincidence, Jane Franklin’s group arrived in Achill just days after a triumphal visit to the island by John MacHale, his first as archbishop. What might the adventurer Lady Jane have made of the robed prelate, had they come to face-to-face, with their diametrically opposed nineteenth-century outlooks?
Dressed in episcopal robes, the archbishop had led a procession of thirteen priests, followed by an enthusiastic crowd waving banners emblazoned with ‘Down the Schematics’. He officiated in a splendid spectacle at a high mass in nearby Dookinella within sight of leaping Atlantic waves in an atmosphere of near hysteria.In an impressive display in the presence of their archbishop, a succession of priests addressed the crowd and denounced the colony, calling on the people to have no interaction of any sort with the Achill Mission: ‘neither borrowing nor lending, neither buying nor selling’. In a theatrical gesture that matched the striking location, a solemn curse was invoked on those who dared violate the mandate of not associating with the colony.
Soon after the episcopal visit, the Connaught Telegraph predicted the imminent demise of the Achill Mission: ‘in six months more, within the tenantless walls of the colony will be heard only the shrill whistle of the whirlwind, or the night-screech of the owl – the buildings shall stand as a lasting record of the folly and hypocrisy of their architects’.3 The prediction proved to be a delusion, while the archbishop’s visit certainly presented an image of the fiery antagonism between John MacHale and Edward Nangle and their respective belief systems.
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Jane Franklin believed passionately in personal improvement and in the power of education and it was this aspect of Edward Nangle’s ministry that interested her most. Some months earlier, on 23 December 1834, the first Achill Mission school had opened at Slievemore village on the western flank of the mountain in a three-roomed building. Within a couple of months there were three more mission schools at Dugort, Cashel and Keel and, quickly realising the threat which these posed, the island’s parish priest Michael Connolly responded by opening three competing schools in early 1835. From a situation where there was little or no education infrastructure on the island, there were now a plethora of opposing schools.
Given that the modern Irish state has struggled to deal with issues of pluralism and multi-denominational expectations in its education system to the present day, it is intriguing to reflect on how an ambitious non-denominational primary school system became embroiled in a sectarian battle for souls in 1830s Achill.
It was just a few years since the Chief Secretary of Ireland, Edward Stanley, set out the bones of his new non-denominational state-supported universal system of elementary education for Ireland in his 1831 ‘Stanley Letter’ after decades of debate and controversy.4 Under the new system, designed to unite children of different creeds, no religious iconography would be allowed in the schools and religious instruction would take place either before or after school hours. In practice, the demarcation between general instruction and religious instruction became blurred. The schools operated under the direction of the National Board and received financial assistance, supplemented by local resources, for school buildings, teacher salaries, school books and equipment. In a reflection of the cultural imperialist policies of the time, all teaching would be through the medium of English while school texts were centrally produced. It was a revolutionary experiment in state education and secularity.
Edward Nangle and John MacHale initially opposed the national system, both arguing that secular and religious education were inseparable and should be controlled by the respective denominations. For his part, Edward railed against a scheme which, he held, aimed to ‘withhold the knowledge of God’s word from the children of Ireland’.5 He would reject the national scheme and, instead, put scripture teaching at the heart of his mission schools and operate them through privately raised funding without government support.
John MacHale was hostile to the state scheme from the beginning, opposing it on the grounds that it would be non-denominational, that the Irish language would be non-compulsory and that school texts would be British in character. However, the pragmatic archbishop, faced with the threat posed by the Achill Mission, saw an opportunity to secure state funding to establish competing island schools under the influence of his local clergy. The battle for the hearts of the Achill children was in full swing.
Jane