Edward King (bishop of Elphin)

For the Church of England bishop, see Edward King (Bishop of Lincoln).

Edward King DD (died 8 March 1639) was a Church of Ireland Bishop of Elphin from 1611 to 1639.[1]

King was an Englishman, a native of Huntingdonshire.[2] His predecessor as bishop of Elphin, John Lynch, greatly impoverished the see by alienating properties and in 1611 resigned, declaring himself a Roman Catholic. During more than a quarter of a century as bishop, King was able to recover Lynch's alienations and much improved the revenue of the diocese.[3] Dod's Peerage of 1848 says of him that "...his bishopric, which he found the poorest, he left one of the richest in all Ireland".[2]

In 1638, King was offered the Archbishopric of Tuam, but "flatly refused".[4] Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, Lord Deputy of Ireland, mentions him honourably in a letter to William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, calling him "truly a Royal bishop".[2]

King is the ancestor of the King Baronets of Charlestown,[2] and the title is now held by his descendant Sir Wayne Alexander King, 8th Baronet (b. 1962).

Notes

  1. ↑ Fryde, E. B., et al., Handbook of British Chronology (Cambridge University Press, 1996) p. 392
  2. 1 2 3 4 Dod, Charles R., The Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, of Great Britain and Ireland (1848) p. 279
  3. ↑ Haydn, Joseph, The Book of Dignities (London: Longmans, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851) p. 483
  4. ↑ McCafferty, John, The Reconstruction of the Church of Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 2007) p. 145
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