Author: Peter Marshall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Price: £12.99
Isbn: 9780199273713

Atherton, the only Anglican bishop hanged for sodomy, lived in the reign of Charles I. The English, having subdued the Irish, were anxious to convert them to Protestantism. A century before, Henry VIII had set up the Church of Ireland, to which few Irishmen belonged. In Charles’s time, it was necessary to augment the clerical establishment with English imports. One was John Atherton.

It was the duty of Thomas Wentworth, the English Lord Deputy in Dublin, to nourish the Church of Ireland. The diocese of Waterford had not been faring too well, with local magnates plucking away its perceived territories. Wentworth knew Atherton to be a tough cookie and sent him to sort the matter out, which he did, making, one suspects, enemies in the process. Then, something copreous hit the fan.

Atherton was publicly accused of sodomy. His accuser signed his own death warrant; in those days both consenting partners suffered the rope. Atherton went to the gallows pleading innocence and victimisation. His alleged partner was likewise hanged.

The Irish language term for a conspiracy is uisce-fe-thalamh, ‘water under the ground’, and one cannot read the narrative without feeling that some such subterranean liquid was afloat. And, as Jimmy Cricket, Irish comedian, was wont to remark, there’s more.

In Somerset, Mrs Leakey visited her daughter-in-law. This would not have been noteworthy, except that Mrs Leakey had been dead for some time. The visitant told her son’s wife to bring a message to her daughter, Bishop Atherton’s wife. Old Mother Leakey’s daughter-in-law was not the only one to see her in this post-mortem state. She was also observed by a urinating clergyman.

A commission of surprisingly highly placed commissioners investigated. They dismissed the ghost story as nonsense, but showed a remarkable interest in the message the fictitious ghost hadn’t left. It leaves you with the impression that there was even more water underfoot a-gurgle.

There is perhaps too much detail for a ‘popular’ book and too little for a strictly academic one. The end is also a little disappointing, for, unlike writers whose work is aimed exclusively at a non-academic market, the author does not produce any solution to the questions raised by this series of curious events. But the book is interesting, absorbing and written in an engaging style.