Hugh M'Neile
British priest (1795-1879)
Hugh Boyd M‘Neile (18 July 1795 – 28 January 1879) was a well-connected and controversial Irish-born Calvinist Anglican of Scottish descent.
He was anti-Tractarian and anti-Roman Catholic (and, even more so, anti-Anglo-Catholic) and an Evangelical and millenarian cleric, who was also an advocate of the year-for-a-day principle, M‘Neile was the perpetual curate of St Jude's Liverpool (1834–1848), the perpetual curate of St Paul's Princes Park (1848–1867), an honorary canon of Chester Cathedral (1845–1868) and the Dean of Ripon (1868–1875).
He was a member of the Protestant Association (in its 19th-century incarnation), the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the Irish Society, the Church Missionary Society, and the Church Association.
M‘Neile was an influential demagogue, a renowned public speaker, an evangelical cleric and an opponent of "Popery", who was inflamed by the increasing number of Irish Roman Catholics in Liverpool. He was known for his stirring oratory, his immoderate preaching, and his many publications. He was loved, admired and respected by some and he was an object of derision and scorn for others.
Family
Hugh Boyd M‘Neile, the younger son of Alexander M'Neile (1762–1838) and Mary M'Neile, née McNeale (?–1852), was born at Ballycastle, County Antrim on 17 July 1795, just three years before the Irish Rebellion of 1798; and, in 1798, M‘Neile was taken by his mother from Ballycastle to relatives in Scotland, in an open boat, to escape the dangers and atrocities of "the troubles" associated with the Irish Rebellion (Boyd, 1968).
M‘Neile's father owned considerable property (including the large farm at Collier's Hall), was a Justice of the Peace and served as the High Sheriff of the County of Antrim. His brother, John M‘Neile (1788–1855), having made his fortune in South America, returned to Ireland and was one of the founding members of the Northern Bank, the first bank in Belfast. John M‘Neile married Charlotte Lavinia Dallas (1803–1859) on 11 June 1823 and had two sons, Henry Hugh (1829–?) and Alexander John (1842–?) and one daughter, Mary Harriet (1833–1919), who married Hugh McCalmont Cairns (1810–1885), the First Earl Cairns, who served as Attorney General in the third Derby–Disraeli ministry (10 July 1866 – 29 October 1866), as Lord Chancellor in the first and second Disraeli ministries, and as (opposition) Conservative Leader in the House of Lords (1869–1870).
The public source identifies “Hugh M'Neile” as british priest (1795-1879). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hugh, M'Neile and British.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hugh M'Neile” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.