Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - G for Priscilla Hannah Gurney

Priscilla Hannah Gurney was born on 22 June 1757 in Norwich, the elder of the two daughters of Joseph Gurney, a merchant, and Christiana Barclay. Priscilla's father died when she was four, but when she was ten her mother married John Freame, her first cousin, and the family moved from Norfolk to Bush Hill, Enfield. A son was born but John Freame's poor health led him and his wife to leave their children with relatives and travel on the continent. In 1770 he died and the family moved again, this time to Bath, which Priscilla saw as a 'vortex of dissipation'. About two years later her mother married for a third time, to William Watson of Bath, a physician, scientist and non-Quaker. This was the second time that Priscilla's mother had married against the rules of the Society of Friends, marriage with first cousins and non-Quakers both being frowned upon. On both occasions she had escaped with a loving reprimand rather than disownment, but she was determined that her daughters should not offend in this way and kept a close eye on their suitors.

Company At Play from The Comforts of Bath by Rowlandson 1798

In 1775, when she was 18, Priscilla went on an extended visit to her Norfolk relations and while she was there refused a marriage proposal from a young Quaker. This visit also brought into focus the spiritual dilemmas she was facing. For several years afterwards she was torn between the influence of her Quaker relations and that of her worldly friends in Bath, one of whom was zealous in urging Priscilla to convert to the Church of England. Eventually Priscilla, wanting to please her friend, was baptized and attended church services but was still unsatisfied. Her Quaker relations talked and wrote to her and gave her Quaker books to read. She tried to blot out the inner voice she heard saying "I must be a Quaker" by going to balls, concerts and plays in Bath, but the mental anguish of her spiritual struggle made her ill.

Barclay's Apology title-page

At last Priscilla decided to read some Quaker books and found to her surprise that she agreed with everything in her ancestor Robert Barclay's Apology, a standard work of Quaker theology. She told her family that she was now a Quaker. Her mother asked Priscilla not to change her appearance and Priscilla tried to oblige but eventually felt compelled to dress and speak as a 'plain Friend'. She was still stuggling spiritually and felt more comfortable with other Quakers than with her family.

When Priscilla was 27 she turned down another proposal from a young Quaker to whom she had at first been attracted. He refused to accept her rejection, trying to hold her to an 'understanding' which she did not feel they had, and harassing her both personally and through his family and friends. This emotional pressure made her ill and she took to her bed where she was visited by several weighty Friends. Among them was Mary Davis of Minehead, who befriended Priscilla, introduced her to Richard Reynolds and his wife Rebecca and took her to visit them at their home in Coalbrookdale.

Dale House, Coalbrookdale

Mary and Priscilla planned to set up home together, and even after Mary's marriage to John Merryweather in 1788 they still pursued their intention. But Mary's death, after the birth of her second child in 1791, put paid to this and Priscilla made her home instead with the Reynolds, who she called her 'parental friends', at Dale House, Coalbrookdale. The close-knit Quaker circle of families at Coalbrookdale, enlivened by a constant stream of visitors, at last gave Priscilla a secure base in which she felt at home and to which she could contribute. She became a Quaker minister in 1792 and travelled both locally and as far afield as Scotland and the Scilly Isles.

Priscilla, described by a friend as 'small in person, beautiful in countenance, elegant in manner', was the ideal person for her young cousin Elizabeth Gurney (later Fry) to be sent to visit in 1798 when she too was going through a spiritual struggle. Priscilla acted as a calm and sympathetic influence and introduced Elizabeth to Deborah Darby, who prophesied her future service.

Mary Ann Schmmelpenninck

In 1804 Richard Reynolds, after the death of his wife, decided to leave Coalbrookdale for Bristol and Priscilla also moved away, back to Bath where her sister still lived. There she made a striking figure in her old-fashioned plain Quaker dress and black silk hood. Her friend Mary Ann Schimmelpenninck recalls, 'She had what is called a helmeted eyelid, and a beautiful and serenely arched eyebrow, which contributed to her devout and tranquil expression, beautifully formed nose indicated at once strength and acuteness of intelligence and great delicacy of taste'. For the rest of her life Priscilla, in increasingly delicate health, lived in Bath, sometimes travelling in the ministry, and cultivated her talent for friendship. She was 'constant, ardent and faithful in attachment, earnestly persevering in the endeavour to serve her friends'. Eventually confined to her house by an extreme susceptibility of the lungs, but still welcoming small groups of friends, she died in Bath on 17 November 1828 at the age of 71.

In spite of Priscilla's misgivings about publishing her spiritual autobiography Memoirs of the Life and Religious Experience of Priscilla Hannah Gurney edited by S. Allen was issued in 1834, only six years after her death. Much of its interest lies in what it tells us about the struggles of one brought up both among Friends and 'in the world'. Priscilla Hannah is referred to by both her names because there was a contemporary Priscilla Gurney who was also a minister.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 46 - W for Mary Waterhouse

Mary Waterhouse, 1871, by Samuel Lawrence

Mary Bevan (1805-1880) was the eldest child and only daughter of Paul and Rebecca (Capper) Bevan of Tottenham. Her mother died in 1817 leaving Mary, aged 12, and five young sons. In time Mary took over the role of housekeeper to her father and brothers, greatly assisted by three of her maternal aunts, Katharine Backhouse, Mary Mounsey and Sarah Harris. Mary was described as ‘of good height, graceful in figure, with perfect features and beautiful profile’ although she had a cast in her left eye (which this portrait disguises).

 

In 1825 at the age of 20 Mary began to write a spiritual journal. In it she recorded among other things her thoughts, prayers and anxieties, her precarious state of health and family matters. From it we learn that when young Mary refused several suitors and had feelings for one man which were not returned. Eventually in 1829, with the encouragement of her father who knew and did business with the family, she married Alfred Waterhouse (1798-1873) of Liverpool. He came from a large family of 6 girls and 8 boys, children of Nicholas Waterhouse, the founder of a very successful cotton broking business which most of his sons joined.

Oakfield, Aigburgh in 1848

Alfred built a house for his family at Aigburth, Liverpool, taking particular care with laying out the garden and trees. They stayed there, adding extensions as the family grew, until 1849. They had seven children who survived infancy - four sons and three daughters. 

Mary's journal tells of the growth of her family and also of her spiritual struggles. In Liverpool meeting the prosperous young woman was sometimes reprimanded for not dressing plainly enough and as a young mother had qualms herself as this extract from 1831 makes clear - At meeting yesterday for the first time since my confinement:- the beginning of it, I felt uncomfortable – being in a cloak – the colour of which I feared might offend some who would not wear such a one - & might be occasion of offence in others, who might like to imitate it. How much better to endeavour to keep to what could take the attention of none, though I did not feel condemnation on account of the colour with regard to myself, it not being one I preferred, or exactly what I intended to buy. – But of this, enough, - except that if it still occasion me uneasiness it will be better to sacrifice the cloak.

Mary and Alfred Waterhouse c 1872

Mary also struggled for many years against expressing her gift for the ministry, perhaps in part because of her fear of offending her husband, as this passage from 1836 shows - I had another distressing meeting, believing a few words were called for from me, even on my knees, & not obeying. My remorse was great, which my countenance no doubt bespoke, one of my sisters whom I saw some little time afterwards affectionately enquiring what ailed me:- I found no liberty to tell her, nor have I to mention the subject to any-one except that that evening, or before we rose the next morning, I thought it best to tell my precious husband part of what I suffered. The communication met with the reception I could not but expect from him – kindness but no sympathy, & I believe I promised to struggle against all feeling of the kind as long as I could. Alfred felt, and other weighty Friends often told him, that he should be the minister but in the end this did not happen and instead Mary was recorded a minister in 1842. 
 

Sneyd Park 1854

Alfred Waterhouse retired from business in 1847, when he was nearly 50, and having ambitions to become a farmer, looked around for a place in the country. In April 1849 the family removed permanently from Liverpool to Redland Hall, a house near Bristol, and thence in April 1850 to Sneyd Park, an imposing but damp and rather inconvenient residence in the same area where they remained for five years. As the boys were growing up they then moved to London, to 11 Cumberland Terrace next to Regents Park, so that they could attend University College School  and university.

Whiteknights House from the East

Finally in December 1858 Mary and Alfred Waterhouse moved to Reading where Alfred had purchased part of the Whiteknights estate. A new house called Whiteknights was designed and built for them by their architect son Alfred which they moved into in November 1859 and remained in for the rest of their lives. (This is now occupied by adminstrative staff of the University of Reading which eventually took over the Whiteknights site) Throughout her life Mary remained a member of the Society of Friends but her husband and children became increasingly estranged.

Alfred Waterhouse Junior

In 1864 her five youngest children were baptised into the Church of England and in 1877 Alfred junior and his family followed them.  Mary’s reaction was very like that of Elizabeth Fry – happy if she felt they were truly ‘following Christ’. Mary felt that, especially given her position as a minister, she had to stay faithful to the Society in which she had been brought up – I must stay with those who stay.

Mary was increasingly involved with her family, writing copious letters, visiting them and receiving visits, especially after Alfred junior, who had become a very successful architect (perhaps his most famous building being the Natural History Museum) built Fox Hill House, also on the Whiteknights estate, for his family in 1868. Alfred senior died while walking in his garden in 1873. After some years as a widow, cared for by her unmarried daughter Maria, Mary died in 1880 and was buried at the Meeting House in Reading.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 42 - U for 'Unknown, unhonoured and unsung'

This quotation from an almost forgotten poem by a little-known Californian poet, Samuel John Alexander, who garnered one favourable review from the New York Times in 1912 before vanishing into obscurity, sums up my reason for researching, writing and sharing the history of Quakers and others.

I never cease to be amazed at how little most Friends know about the history of the Quaker movement or of the faithful lives of our foremothers and forefathers. A few names will be familiar - George Fox, Margaret Fell, John Woolman, Elizabeth Fry - but what of the less well known? I have gained immeasurably from reading the writings, published and unpublished, of earlier Friends, from listening to these voices from the past, and I want to share that experience with others.

I know that some Friends today think that Quaker history is irrelevant to how we live our lives now but this is very far from the truth in my experience. If we can understand the shifts in emphasis over time, the differences in tradition and how they have developed, then we will be better equipped to face the difficulties of our own time. Do we worry about becoming an aged Society with no appeal to the young? - Friends in the 17th, 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries did too. Can their explorations and solutions help us now?

Our Quaker faith is based on faithfulness - to God, to our Inward Teacher, to our leadings and our testimonies - and it can help us in our struggles to hear stories of what has gone before. As Alice Hayes put it in 1723 'Truly I have thought that if I had met with the like Account of any that had gone through such exercise, it would have been some Help to me.'

Over the years, with varying levels of success, I have tried to encourage Friends to share their spiritual autobiographies as a help to others. I have also published the writings of earlier Quakers and written about their lives in many different places including this blog. All this is because I do not want these people, who I think of as my friends, to remain 'unknown, unhonoured and unsung' and also because I am convinced that they have much to say which can be a Help to us today.

                                                                                            

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 29 - O for Amelia Opie

Octagon Unitarian Chapel, Norwich

Amelia Alderson was born in 1769 in Norwich, the only child of John Alderson, a successful doctor and Unitarian who attended the Octagon chapel in the city. When her mother died in 1784 Amelia was fifteen and took charge of her father's household. She entered enthusiastically into local society among other dissenter families such as the Martineaus and the Gurneys and was very popular. The good-looking and high-spirited girl sang ballads of her own composition, gave dramatic recitations and published poems.

Silhouette of Amelia in 1790s

Amelia's political interests were stimulated by the French Revolution and her father's interest in the Norwich reform movement. In September 1794 Amelia contributed fifteen poems to The Cabinet, a periodical begun by that movement. Also in 1794 Amelia visited London where she discovered the excitement of attending the law courts, the spectacle and drama of which remained a compelling interest throughout her life. She widened her acquaintance in theatrical and radical circles, meeting the Kembles, Mrs Siddons and Mary Wollstonecraft, whom she particularly admired. She declared that everything she saw for the first time disappointed her except for Mary Wollstonecraft and the Cumberland lakes!

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie

It was in London too that she met the self-taught Cornish artist John Opie who was eight years older than herself. After a brief courtship she became his second wife in 1798. To support their household John gave up his prestigious historical and mythological painting for the more lucrative portraiture. He was more conventional that Amelia and, coming from a working-class background, was not always comfortable with her love of society but he encouraged her to write. Her novel Father and Daughter, about misled virtue and family reconciliation, which appeared in 1801, was a great success and Sir Walter Scott himself was moved to tears by it. Encouraged by Mary Wollstonecraft, Amelia followed this in 1804 with Adeline Mowbray, an exploration of the relationship between a mother and daughter.

Amelia Opie painted by her husband

Unfortunately Amelia's life in London came to a tragic end when her husband died in 1807 aged forty six of a fever probably made worse by overwork. Having no children she returned to live in her father's house and participate in Norwich society. She continued with her writing but also renewed her early friendship with the wealthy Quaker Gurney family, especially with Joseph John Gurney, the leading evangelical Friend. Although nearly twenty years younger than Amelia, he was a great influence on her.

She began attending Quaker meetings in 1814 and gradually became convinced that here, rather than in the Unitarianism of her upbringing, was the vital religion that she sought. In 1820 her father fell ill and she nursed him until his death five years later. Throughout this time the Gurneys were a great support to them and Dr Alderson fully approved Amelia's application for membership which was accepted two months before his death, so much so that he was himself buried in the Quaker burial ground at Gildencroft.

There were certain changes that Amelia undertook when she became a Quaker at the age of fifty six. The chief of these was that she gave up novel writing and afterwards wrote only upon serious, factual and moral subjects. She also adopted the Quaker plain speech and plain dress, but with a style of her own. Emma Marshall remembers that her Quaker bonnet was small and perched somewhat coquettishly on her head, and the train of her silk gown made a 'swish' upon the matting as she came into meeting.

Amelia Opie in Quaker dress

Amelia now spent much of her time in works of charity. Influenced by her friend Joseph John Gurney's sister, Elizabeth Gurney Fry, she visited prisons, hospitals and workhouses. She also gave unobtrusive material assistance to her friends and especially to fellow writers such as Mary Russell Mitford. She was much concerned with the Bible Society and the Anti-slavery Society and in 1840 attended the Anti-slavery Convention in London.

Amelia was financially comfortable and able to travel widely, always delighting in the company of others from whatever level of society they came. She was an inveterate correspondent, often writing more than six letters a day. Every year she came to London to attend the Yearly Meeting. As she said in 1843, 'Yearly Meeting has engrossed me much as usual, for I never missed one sitting since I obtained the great privilege of belonging to it '. This record remained unbroken for nearly thirty years until ill-health prevented her attendance.

Amelia Opie's house on Castle Meadow, Norwich

Until almost the end of her life she retained her love of fun, her merry laugh and ready repartee. At the age of eighty-two, confined by rheumatism to a wheelchair, she visited the Great Exhibition and meeting there her friend Miss Berry, similarly transported, playfully proposed that they should have chair race. The last years of Amelia's life were spent in a house on Castle Meadow in Norwich on the corner of a small alley now known as Opie Street. She died at the age of 84 in December 1853 and was buried next to her father in Gildencroft.

Amelia Opie's life was full of contrasts and she sometimes appeared a rather worldly Friend, but coming to Quakerism at a later age she valued the Society highly and tried her best to live up to its standards. Perhaps her friend the poet Robert Southey put it best when he said that she embraced Quakerism 'not losing in the change her warmth of heart and cheerfulness of spirit, nor gaining by it any increase of sincerity and frankness, for with these nature had endued her and society, even of the great, had not corrupted them.'

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 13 - G for the three Sarah Grubbs

One of the problems of researching Quakers of the past is their habit of marrying within other Quaker families and of using only a small stock of first names. This often leads to a situation where contemporaries are given, or acquire on marriage, the same name. For the sake of clarity therefore this week I am going to try to distinguish between the three Sarah Grubbs. Sarah Pim Grubb (1746 – 1832), Sarah Tuke Grubb (1756-1790) and Sarah Lynes Grubb (1773 – 1840) were connected both by time and place.

Sarah Pim was born in 1746 at Mountrath in Ireland, the eldest of the fifteen children  of John and Sarah Pim. Her father was a rich Dublin wool merchant and she was related through both her parents to most of the prominent Quaker families in Ireland. In 1771 the family moved to Tottenham in Middlesex where they  mixed in fashionable Quaker society in and around London. Writing to friends in Ireland Sarah noted that the English Quakers loved finery whereas the Irish retained the ‘plain’ dress but entertained lavishly. 

River Suir at Clonmel

Sarah moved back to Ireland in 1778 when she married John Grubb (1737-1784)  a flour miller of Anner Mills, Clonmel, co. Tipperary and entered the circle of wealthy Quaker families who controlled Clonmel's milling industry in its golden age. Although some in this circle lived, as the visiting American Quaker William Savery said, ‘like princes of the earth’  the Grubbs chose to live plainly and their comfortable home, Anner Mills, for years provided hospitality to numerous travelling Quaker ministers. 

Main Street Clonmel

Their happy marriage was ended prematurely with John Grubb's death from overwork in 1784. At this point  Sarah chose to take her husband's place and run the mills herself, with the support of her brother Joshua, a prominent Dublin banker and her sister Elizabeth Pim. She entrusted the care of her five small daughters to Sarah Lynes who came from London in 1787 and of whom I shall say more later. Sarah Pim Grubb found that business, and contact with the country people, raised her spirits. She made a success of the business through strict integrity, and a policy of always using cash when buying in, and selling at low rates rather than giving credit. 

Possessed of great clearness of mind and a powerful character, Sarah Pim Grubb was also a person of warm human sympathy and benevolence. She did what she could to alleviate widespread local misery caused by poverty and drunkenness, and she was quick to sen aid to those afflicted by the 1798 rising. She was much concerned with education and helped to fund Newtown School in Waterford. This combination of success in business and social concern won her the nickname the Queen of the South. She died, leaving a fortune of over £100,000, at Anner Mills in 1832 and was buried in the Quaker burial ground at Clonmel.
 

Sarah Lynes was born in 1773 in Wapping, London and attended the Friends school in Clerkenwell. From here, at the age of fourteen, she went to Ireland, as I have said, to look after the children of Sarah Pim Grubb of Anner Mills, Clonmel. While in this household she experienced the stirrings of a call to the ministry and first spoke in meeting, with great reluctance, when she was seventeen. Four years later, in 1794, she was recorded a minister by Co. Tipperary MM and began to travel in the ministry in Ireland, encouraged and supported by her employer. In 1797 she returned to London, started a school with her sister and continued her extensive travels. She spoke whenever she felt called, often in the open air and in all weathers one result of which was an increasing deafness.

A Quaker Wedding by Percy Bigland, 1896

It was thus as an experienced and seasoned minister that, in 1804, she married John Grubb of Clonmel, the nephew of her old employer. This became evident during the ceremony in Isleworth meeting house. As one of her friends, Elizabeth Dudley, wrote, ‘Sally like a notable woman, went into the [ministers] gallery after the ceremony and was largely engaged to the people, many not Friends being present; she then took her seat beside John again...’ The marriage was a happy one as John had nothing but admiration for his Sally’s gifts and supported her throughout the nearly forty years they had together. They went to live in Ireland for fifteen years but then Sarah felt that God was calling her back to England so they and their four children returned.

In her family circle Sarah was characterised as ‘highly humourous’ but this side of her was seldom shown in her public minister’s role. Hers was a prophetic gift and she was often moved to warn against what she saw as the dangers to the Society of Friends in a very trenchant and outspoken manner. As a Quietist she saw herself as acting only as a mouthpiece for God’s word, not speaking in her own words or will. The targets of her strictures  were mainly the Evangelical party led by J.J. Gurney, who she saw as too much given over to worldliness and money-making to be proper leaders for Quakers. She also feared that their greater emphasis on education  for ministry and on Bible study would lead them to depend more on their own intellect than on patient waiting for the Inward Light.

Over the years, in the private reports of Friends, we hear Sarah’s words ringing out in Yearly Meeting after Yearly Meeting. In 1807 she ‘was led particularly to address those who were as the great men in the world, querying in a very emphatic manner whether they were not more solicitous to have their heads stored with knowledge and their purses with money than they were to have their hearts replenished with heavenly treasure.’ 

Joseph John Gurney

By 1836 the Evangelical party had become dominant in the Society of Friends in Britain and the Quietist, traditional cause seemed all but lost. Sarah was not silent however and YM in 1838 saw her, two years before her death, ill but still determined to repeat her message of warning one last time. John Southall describes her as ‘altered in appearance, she is much, very much thinner, but her eye has its wonted brightness, her manner is lively and her voice good, her address was perhaps even more than usually plain spoken, though it was not such as ought to have given offence to a single human being.’ Doubtless some were offended, but Sarah Lynes Grubb was only being true to that call to the ministry which she had heard fifty years before. As she said at that last YM, ‘You may perhaps be thinking it is only a poor insignificant woman who is teling you what she thinks, and you will not receive it, but it is not the instrument but the power from which the words proceed that ought to be looked up to.’

Between Sarah Pim and Sarah Lynes comes Sarah Tuke. She was born in 1756 in York, the second of the five children of William Tuke (1732-1822) and his first wife Elizabeth Hoyland. When Sarah was four years old her mother died but when she was nine Esther Maud Tuke became her stepmother. She and her siblings always gratefully acknowledged Esther’s tenderness and care for them and the fact that she treated them no differently from her own three children. 

Sarah struggled when young with her natural vivacity of disposition but when she was sixteen she helped her step-mother to care for John Woolman, the American Quaker minister, in his last illness and his example of resignation and faith made a great impression on her mind. She long remembered his words to her, 'My child, thou seems very kind to me, a poor creature. The Lord will reward you for it.' Sarah first appeared in the ministry, after much hesitation and agonising, in 1779 at the age of twenty three and at once embarked upon extensive travels in the ministry which continued for the rest of her life. At first she accompanied her step-mother into Westmoreland and Cumberland and in the same year went with another relation to Cheshire and Lancashire.

In 1782 Sarah married Robert Grubb [1743-1797] of Clonmel, who had lived for some time in York, and they settled at the village of Foston ten miles away, but almost at once Sarah left on a visit to Scotland with Mary Proud of Hull which she found 'a painful exercising time.' On her return Sarah settled into a domestic life which involved frequent travel, sometimes with her husband, but also with female companions. In 1786 Sarah accompanied Rebecca Jones of Philadelphia on a visit to Wales  “rendered arduous by the ruggedness of the country and the road being partly over the tops of very high mountains.” Next year Sarah went, again with Rebecca, to Ireland, but she also found time to act as Clerk of the Womens Yearly Meeting in London in both 1786 and 1787. During this time Sarah began to feel called to leave the security of York and her beloved family and in 1787 she and Robert moved to Ireland and settled near Clonmel. In 1788 they went with other Friends, including George and Sarah Dillwyn of America, to Holland, Germany and France.

Although she had no children of her own, Sarah had decided views on education. She believed that children needed both discipline and respect and should be taught useful skills. In York in 1784 she had helped her step-mother to establish a school for girls and when they moved to Ireland she and Robert founded Suir Island girls’ school at their home on the same principles.

There was little time for Sarah to rest. In 1790 she and Robert, together with the Dillwyns, went again to travel in the ministry on the continent, in France, Holland, Pyrmont and Germany. When Sarah returned she was physically exhausted and ill but, pausing only to visit her family in York for a few days, she went straight to Dublin for the Ireland Half-Yearly Meeting to report on her travels to Friends. Returning home still weak and unwell she stayed only two weeks before travelling to Cork to attend Quarterly Meeting. Here she collapsed and after ten days illness died on 8th December 1790 at the age of thirty four. After her untimely death several of her writings, on religion and education as well as her journal, were published.  

How did their contemporaries distinguish between the three Sarahs? They did not add their original surnames as I have but instead used a different convention. If two women had the same first name and one had a second name they were known by that, so Priscilla Hannah Gurney (1757-1828) was so called to distinguish her from another Priscilla Gurney who was also a minister. If either woman was married however then her distinguishing second name became that of her husband, so Sarah Tuke became Sarah R Grubb or Sally Robert and Sarah Lynes was called Sarah J Grubb or Sally John. In the same way Elizabeth Fry is sometimes referred to as Elizabeth J Fry to distinguish her from another contemporary Elizabeth Fry. Occasionally a Quaker man would also change his name to distinguish himself from a namesake. When Elizabeth Fry's brother Joseph Gurney began working for the family bank at the age of seventeen he added John to his name to distinguish himself from his uncle Joseph, a senior partner, becoming known as J.J. Gurney.

The three Sarah Grubbs had much in common as well as their names. A dedication to the Quaker ministry, an interest in education and residence in Ireland, in particular Clonmel, also linked them together.