It is no exaggeration to say that Four Courts Press has transformed the recent historiography of the Church of Ireland.
Following the publication in 1933 by Oxford University Press of the three-volume ‘History of the Church of Ireland: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day’ by Walter Alison Phillips, there seemed to be a sense that the Church’s history had been attended to, and in the following decades, little of substance was produced. Much of that which did appear was small in scale, limited in scope, and published by the Association for Promoting Christian Knowledge (APCK), which was, at the time, in effect, the in-house publisher of the Church of Ireland. There were, of course, some significant publications, such as George Seaver’s biography of Archbishop John Gregg, RB McDowell’s history of the disestablished Church, and Donald Akenson’s important study of the Church’s administration. Still, these were exceptions and, perhaps significantly, they were not published in Ireland.
However, the scene began to change for the better in the final quarter of the 20th century. Two conferences, in 1989 and 1993, suggested that there was a new appetite for Church of Ireland history, and several apparently unrelated developments coalesced to promote this idea. One of the positive effects of Vatican II was to make the Church of Ireland a respectable subject for research amongst Catholic historians. The foundation of a Church of Ireland Historical Society in 1994 provided a much-needed focus for research and discussion, whilst the decline of the APCK left a gap in the publishing market.
Enter Mr Michael Adams and Dr Ray Gillespie. Michael had disengaged from Irish Academic Press in 1995 and set out on his own with Four Courts Press, and he was looking for authors. A Northern Roman Catholic who was a member of Opus Dei, he was an improbable publisher for the Church of Ireland, but in business, as in most things, Michael was ecumenical.
A little earlier, in 1991, Ray Gillespie had begun his career as a history lecturer. A Belfast-born Methodist who taught history in Maynooth, he — like Michael — was an improbable convert to the cause of Church of Ireland history. However, he was an assiduous researcher and a prolific writer who was alert to developments in Irish academic publishing, and he quickly became an important link with Four Courts Press.
The project which brought them together was the writing of a multi-authored history of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, which was to be edited by the Historiographer of the Church of Ireland, Dr Kenneth Milne. Ray was to be one of the authors and, at his suggestion, Four Courts was approached to be the publisher. Michael agreed, and what was to become a five-year project began in 1995.
However, since there was to be a long gestation period for the book, Ray suggested that there should be an ancillary documents series. These books would make available important source material from the Christ Church archives and would also keep the project alive in the public mind. Michael agreed to this initiative, even though it was unlikely that any of the titles would be best sellers. Seven volumes were published between 1996 and 2001, highlighting the Cathedral’s accounts, architecture, chapter acts, music, and deeds.
The Christ Church documents series provided the inspiration for a similar series based on source material in the RCB Library. Between 2002 and 2020, nine volumes of vestry minutes, parish account books, episcopal visitations, and sermons were published. As with the Christ Church series, these were not big sellers for Four Courts, but they provided invaluable publicity for the Church’s archives and further cemented the relationship between the publisher and the Church.
The publication in 1997 of Kenneth Milne’s seminal history of the Irish charter schools and Alan Ford’s study of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland were the first fruits of that relationship, one which grew significantly as the 21st century progressed, and, for the most part, Four Courts became the publisher of choice for those who wanted to write about Church of Ireland history. Further institutional history was published — essays on Church of Ireland clergy and laity, a history of Dublin’s other cathedral, St Patrick’s, and of its near neighbour, Marsh’s Library, as well as Ray Gillespie’s study of the parish of St Nicholas, Galway. There were studies too of important churchmen — Professor Christopher Fauske on Archbishop William King, Dr Anthony Malcomson on Archbishop Charles Agar, and Professor James Kelly on Sir Edward Newenham. Nor was the intellectual and cultural life of the Church ignored. Father Tom Carroll produced an erudite study of the sermons of Jeremy Taylor, and Éibhear Walshe edited the Farahy addresses, which commemorate the writer Elizabeth Bowen.
Much of this output came from established historians, but the introduction by Four Courts of the Maynooth Studies in Local History — another initiative of Ray Gillespie — provided an entrée for new and younger historians to develop their craft by publishing their MA dissertations. And so Brendan Twomey wrote on the Dublin parish of St Paul, Miriam Moffitt on the Diocese of Killala and Achonry, and The Reverend Canon John Crawford produced a history of one of his parishes, St Catherine’s, and went on to write a doctoral thesis which was published by Four Courts as The Church of Ireland in Victorian Dublin.
Michael Adams died in 2009, but his legacy lives on — not just in the books that he published, but in the team he created at Four Courts Press, which continues the good work. Their expertise, enthusiasm, and approachability in the current challenging world of academic publishing suggest that Four Courts Press will continue to be a beacon of light for the historiography of the Church of Ireland.