Edward Wetenhall

[1][2] Wetenhall held the perpetual curacy of Combe Long, Oxfordshire, and the vicarage of St. Stephen's, near St Albans, Hertfordshire; on 11 June 1667 he was collated to a prebend at Exeter, holding with it the mastership (headmaster) of the blue-coat school.

As one of the seven bishops who remained in Ireland during the troubles which began in 1688, he was exposed to much ill-usage at the hands of the Jacobite partisans of James II.

He signed the episcopal letter of thanks (November 1692) to Thomas Firmin for his exertions in relief of the distressed Protestants of Ireland.

Wetenhall, who was translated as bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh on 18 April 1699, would not accept the preferment without trying to procure the restoration of Sheridan, to whose support he contributed.

He intervened as a peacemaker in the controversy on the doctrine of the Trinity raised by the publications of William Sherlock and John Wallis.

In An Earnest and Compassionate Suit for Forbearance … by a Melancholy Stander-by, 1691, he commends Richard Hooker's "explication of this mystery", and argues that further discussion is futile and damaging.

He was present (but not on the bench) at the trial (14 June 1703) in Dublin of Thomas Emlyn the Unitarian, and subsequently paid friendly visits to him in prison.

In 1710 he drew up a memorial to James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, the lord lieutenant, urging the need of providing 'books of religion' in the Irish language, in accordance with the ideas of John Richardson, D.D.

[1] Wetenhall married twice; his second wife was Philippa (buried 18 April 1717), sixth daughter of Sir William D'Oyly, bart., of Shottisham, Kent.