A Flight of Parsons

The Divinity Diaspora of Trinity College Dublin

Irish Anglican clergymen played an important role in the creation of a nineteenth-century "Greater Ireland," a term denoting a diasporic movement in which the Irish transformed into a global people, actively participating in British imperial expansion and colonial nation building. These essays address the formative influences and circumstances that informed the mental world and disposition of Irish Anglicans, particularly clergy who were graduates of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), an institution pivotal in the formation of attitudes among the Irish Anglican elite. TCD was the gathering point for Anglicans of different backgrounds, and as such acted as a great leveler and formative center where laity and aspirant clergy were educated together under a common curriculum. In common with the Irish as a whole, TCD graduate clergy exerted an influence on colonial life in the religious, cultural, intellectual, and political spheres out of all proportion to their numbers. Faced with its dismantling in the old world, adherents of the Church of Ireland availed of opportunities for its reconstruction in the new and in the process bequeathed an important legacy in the colonial church.