Anne Warren, the mother of the future bishop, was a Catholic, but of Quaker extraction, and the father had died before the child's birth, so that young Doyle was brought into the world under circumstances, though not of indigence, still not of superfluity in worldly goods. But nature richly endowed him; and what treasures can be sought more desirable than the intrinsic power of soul which no external change can diminish, and which retains its richness, independent of the uncertainties of variable fortune! Nor was his childhood other than obscure, if we may apply the term to that state which, though humble, was illustrated by the tender care and enlightened piety of a Christian mother. His boyhood was not remarkable for those extraordinary manifestations of genius said to be discovered in the younger days of great men. No phenomena indicative of unusual fortune or success in life attended his boyish acts, although there is a tale of some careless fortune-teller having prognosticated the high position and distinguished labors which afterward rendered his name so memorable. At the age of eleven he ran the risk of being shot for his curiosity in observing, at a distance, a battle fought between the patriots of the rebellion and the English forces. His school-days commenced at Rathnavogue, where a Mr. Grace was conducting a seminary of learning to whose seats both Catholics and Protestants had equal access. Hitherto his mother had been his instructor, and there are no impressions so important or so lasting as those imparted to the infant mind by the solicitous teaching of a parent. Under her guidance, the youthful aspirations which inclined his developing reason to the ecclesiastical state of life, were fostered and encouraged, as she early perceived that the tendency of his mental faculties directed in the path of a holy vocation. In the year 1800, she placed him under the care of an Augustinian friar named Crane, who soon discovered the talents of the boy through his eagerness for knowledge, and his intensely studious habits. She died in 1802, leaving him an orphan, but with the prospect of his soon becoming a member of the Augustinian order, which he entered three years afterward. Notwithstanding that he entertained a strong repugnance to the eleemosynary practices of religious communities of begging from door to door--and this aversion he ever retained--he still selected a conventual life in preference to the more public and active labors of a missionary priest. His respect for the dignity of the priestly office was a characteristic trait in his life as bishop, and his ideas on the subject seem to have originated from that natural good taste with which he had been gifted from his infancy.