In Quest of an Heir: The Life and Times of John Butler, Catholic Bishop of Cork, Protestant Baron of Dunboyne by Con Costello (HQ707)

Published 1978: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition / Illustrated throughout

Original red cloth with gilt titles on the spine and original pictorial dust jacket. 175 very clean and bright pages, mild speckled edges and endpapers. Slight shelf wear on dust jacket consistent with age. Overall a well preserved clean and very scarce first edition. (HQ707)

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In Quest of an Heir: The Life and Times of John Butler, Catholic Bishop of Cork, Protestant Baron of Dunboyne by Con Costello

John Butler, third son of the 18th Lord Dunboyne, was appointed Catholic bishop of Cork in 1763; apart from his relationship to the archbishop of Cashel, the new bishop was remarkable for his youth – he was thirty-three, and for the fact that he had but one eye. He occupied the See until 1786, when he resigned – due to a succession of deaths he had inherited the title of Lord Dunboyne and he found the requirements of the coronet incompatible with the demands of the mitre. Denied a dispensation to marry – with the object of producing an heir, he conformed to the Established Church. His recantation in 1787 remains the sole authenticated instance of the apostasy of a member of the Irish hierarchy. In the end, he failed to produce an heir, which gave rise in later years to the quip that he was more heir-minded than heir-conditioned.

The author has woven the many and diverse elements in the life of John Butler into a tale rich in drama, and has cast his subject against a background of his time – and very hectic times they were. Google Books...