Ireland -- History -- Rebellion of 1798; Women -- Ireland -- Biography
It was not alone the young girls of the “Tribes” or the chieftainly
families of the West who were sent to the Convent in Galway to be
trained by the women we have described. Even right across the country
from Drogheda pupils came to them. One of these, Catherine Plunkett,
daughter of Thomas Plunkett, of Drogheda, and a relation of the martyred
Archbishop, Oliver Plunkett, passed from the school room, at an early
age, to the novitiate and received her religious training under Mary
Lynch. “She shared in all the vicissitudes of that Community, who were
several times compelled by religious persecution to quit their convent.
Some sought shelter in the homes of their relations or friends, whilst
not a few experienced the utmost vigours of poverty. Father Hugh
O’Callaghan, who was Prior Provincial of the Dominicans from 1709 to
1718, having during the course of his Visitation, found the Sisters in
this lamentable condition, and without any hope of their being permitted
to return to their Convent, obtained for them from the Archbishop of
Dublin, Most Rev. Dr. Edmund Byrne, permission to settle in his diocese;
accordingly in March, 1717, eight of them (of whom Catherine Plunkett
was one) arrived in the Metropolis and took up their abode first in
Fisher’s Lane, from which they soon afterwards removed to the ancient
Benedictine Convent, Chancel Row (now North Brunswick Street).”[40]
Footnote 40:
Memoir of Mother M. Catherine Plunkett, compiled from the Archives of
Sienna Convent, Drogheda, very kindly furnished me by Mother Prioress
and Community.
After a little time, Catherine Plunkett obtained the permission of her
Superiors to go to Belgium, where she was received into the Convent of
the English Dominican Sisters, called the _Spillikens_, from its
proximity to a pin factory. Here she remained about three years until at
the urgent request of the Primate Hugh MacMahon, she was recalled in
1721, by the Provincial, Dr. Stephen MacEgan, to found a convent in her
native town of Drogheda.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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