Richard Woodward (bishop)

Richard Woodward’s best known work was The Present State of the Church of Ireland, Containing a Description of it’s [sic] Precarious Situation; and the Consequent Danger to the Public, Recommended to the Serious consideration of the Friends of the Protestant Interest, to which are Subjoined, Some Reflections on the Impracticability of a Proper Commutation of Tithes; and a General Account of the Origin and Progress of the Insurrection in Munster (Dublin: W. Sleater 1787), the subject matter of which is sufficiently delineated in its title.

It proved a controversial and successful tract, running rapidly through seven editions and “evinced the force of the author’s arguments, by the violent enmity which it excited against him in all the enemies of the Church”.

[2] Both the controversy and the success may be explained in part by such sentences as: “I need not tell the Protestant proprietor of land, that the security of his title depends very much (if not entirely) on the Protestant ascendancy; or that the preservation of that ascendancy depends entirely on an indissoluble connection between the Sister Kingdoms.” Richard Woodward could not, however, be easily dismissed as a bigot.

As his memorial in his cathedral church records, “He was an eloquent and distinguished Advocate in the House of Peers for the Repeal of the Roman Catholic Penal Statutes in 1782”.

According to John Wesley, who attended a service in the church at Clogher in 1771, where “the congregation was not only large, but remarkably well-behaved”, Woodward was one of the best readers he had heard and “one of the most easy, natural preachers”.