Ecclesiastical Heraldry in County Louth

Gravestone of the late Bishop James Lennon, St Peter's Drogheda

I thought we would examine some of the ecclesiastical heraldry of County Louth. The photograph is of the grave of the late Bishop James Lennon who died in 1989. We'll return to his coat of arms.

County Louth does not have a cathedral, where one would expect to find an abundance of ecclesiastical heraldry. Instead we turn mainly to the era of church building in the aftermath of Catholic Emancipation and also to the two oldest churches of the Church of Ireland tradition which are St Nicholas's in Dundalk and St Peter's in Drogheda.

St Peter's Drgheda

McHugh [1]  notes that Drogheda's medieval ecclesiastical landscape was dominated by the De Lacy foundations, the churches of St Peter and St Mary. The medieval church of St Peter, seat of the archbishops of Armagh, was a large and imposing edifice with chapels or chantries dedicated to St Patrick and to other saints such as St Katherine and St George devotion to whom was popularised by the Norman settlers. Brereton found the body of the church in good repair in 1635, however a visitation report found the church in need of extensive repair following the cromwellian period. In 1748 the church was demolished and a smaller church built in its place.

Deane [2] quotes extracts from Issac Butler's journal of 1744, of those monuments listed, just two survive, those to Dr Pullein and Revd Walker (principal of Drogheda Grammar School, d. 1701). Guillim [3] points to the heraldry on the stained-glass window at St Peter's in Drogheda: ‘He beareth argent, a chevron engrailed between three trumpets sable, by the name of Thunder. see also Dalton [4]. 

                                               Impaled arms of Pullein and Dromore

The impaled arms of Dromore and Pullein, the oldest of these monuments in St Peter's, are for Tobias Pullein, grandson of Samual Pullein, archbishop of Tuam. He was rector of St Peter’s (1682-94) and he was married to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Leigh of Drogheda and Charity Graves [5]. He became bishop of Cloyne and subsequently of Dromore in 1695.

Dromore:        (Bishopric) Argent semée of trefoils slipped vert, a cross pattée gules on a chief azure the sun proper.

Pullein:           Azure, on a bend argent between three lozenges or, three escallops sable.