Nangle was doubtless at times headstrong in forming his opinions, stubborn in holding them and harsh in giving them expression.’[10] In the words of a close contemporary:[11] ‘when animated, the most extraordinary fire lights up his eyes.’[12] After beginning his ministry in Arva, Edward was affected by the Second Reformation religious revival in Cavan among the tenants of Lord Farnham, the landlord of a thirty-thousand-acre estate.

[15] Describing his initial encounter with the island, Nangle wrote: ‘The deep silence of desolation was unbroken, except by the monotonous rippling of the tide as it ebbed or flowed, or the wild scream of the curlew disturbed by some casual intruder on its privacy’.

[16] Apparently moved by what he perceived as the spiritual and temporal destitution he witnessed among the people living on the island, Nangle decided to establish the Achill Mission Colony.

[17] In the following three years, Nangle bought land on the island and negotiated a thirty-one-year leasing contract with Sir Richard O’Donnell,[18] the landlord of the Burrishoole estate, which comprised most of Achill.

[23] Four years after he took up residence on Achill, Edward Nangle wrote: ‘The Missionary Settlement has since grown into a village – the sides of a once barren mountain are now adorned with cultivated fields and gardens … and the stillness of desolation which once reigned is now broken by the hum of the school and the sound of the church-going bell.’ However, the early years of the Colony were marked by bitter confrontation between the Catholic authorities and the Achill Mission with competing schools at the centre of the conflict.

By 1840, a traveller could leave Dublin in the mail on a Thursday evening, sleep in Newport on Friday, reach Achill Sound on Saturday, and worship in Saint Thomas's Church, Dugort, on Sunday morning.

[24] By the early 1840s, the Achill Mission Colony included two-storey slated houses, a printing press, an orphanage, a hospital, a post office, a dispensary, a corn mill and farm buildings, surrounded by fields reclaimed from the wet mountain slopes.

[28] In July 1847, it was suggested that 5,000 out of Achill's total population of 7,000, were receiving practical support[10] from the mission, which had planted twenty-one tons of blight-free foreign potatoes.

In the Achill Missionary Herald editions of January and February 1847, Edward Nangle appeared to admit that the Colony employment figures he had given (4,458 in December 1846) were exaggerated when he commented that these were 'aggregate' numbers.

In March 1848, hundreds of people from Dooniver, Bullsmouth and Ballycroy approved a declaration of thanks to Nangle[5] for supplying them with potatoes and turnips during the famine, without which they would have starved.

[30] Nangle was warned of a secret plan to attack the colony, kill those living there, burn the buildings and put an end to the Achill Mission.

This time speaking to a large crowd outdoors he said: "I call upon you to make a solemn promise this day not to have anything to do with the Achill Mission people ...

In 1837, MacHale made another visit, this time stirring up the populace against what he called "these venomous fanatics", referring to those involved with the Achill Mission Colony.

[29] On 2 January 1839, Francis Reynolds, a coastguard officer who was denounced by name at Catholic services on several successive Sundays, died as a result of being hit on the head in a house in Keel.

[29] Nangle accused the Crown of holding a "mock" trial and as a direct consequence of these and other incidents, a new courthouse was built at Achill Sound.

In 1848, the Achill Mission produced a prospectus seeking to raise funds to purchase additional island land from Sir Richard O'Donnell.

The document describes, from a Colony perspective, the sectarian unrest during the first decade of the Achill Mission as well as its activities in the early famine years.

Shortly afterward, the foundations were laid for a Franciscan monastery, a school for the local children, a glebe house for two priests and a model farm to provide education in modern systems of agriculture.

In MacHale's own words, he planned to counteract "the mischievous speculators, who, more than twenty years ago, bought a farm in Achill and planted themselves there to drive a lucrative trade on English credulity".

[35] Although they were at the Colony for less than two hours on 22 June 1842, the Halls branded the Mission ‘a complete failure’ and targeted Nangle, labelling him as a man without any genuine sense of gentle, peace-loving, Christian zeal.

In a personal letter to Nangle, Samuel Hall wrote: ‘Be assured, sir, that religion is strong enough to overcome your miserable attempts to degrade it – that Christianity cannot be permanently tainted by coarseness, ignorance and bigotry of which you are representative.

I have done my duty.’[36] In a response to the Halls' visit, Edward Nangle highlighted the significant fact that the visit had only lasted less than two hours: ‘Truly, sir, the rapidity with which you can require experience throws into shade the wonders of the steam press!’ As to the Halls’ references to the cost of the Mission's activities, Nangle replied: ‘as if the salvation of immortal souls for which Christ died, was not a worthy object for the expenditure of a smaller sum of the world’s wealth than is often squandered without a rebuke, on the follies and vanities of this perishing world’.

They paid tribute to the work of the mission staff during the crisis months of the famine, saying they were ‘indefatigable in their efforts to raise funds’ and ‘distributed with no sparing had to those who must otherwise have perished’.

The negative critique of the Gazette continued into another article reviewing Nangle's biography: ‘Everyone has their own idea of heroism, and practices hero-worship after their own fashion.