John Atherton - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

John Atherton (1598 – 5 December 1640) was the Anglican Bishop of Waterford and Lismore

Bishop of Waterford and Lismore

The Bishop of Waterford and Lismore is an episcopal title which takes its name after the city of Waterford and town of Lismore in the Republic of Ireland. The title was used by the Church of Ireland until 1838, and is still used by the Catholic Church....

in the Church of Ireland

Church of Ireland

The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...

. He and John Childe (his steward and tithe proctor) were both tried and executed for buggery

Buggery

The British English term buggery is very close in meaning to the term sodomy, and is often used interchangeably in law and popular speech. It may be, also, a specific common law offence, encompassing both sodomy and bestiality.-In law:...

in 1640.

Life and death

Atherton was born in 1598 in Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. He studied at Oxford University and joined the ranks of the Anglican clergy. In 1634 he became Bishop of Waterford and Lismore

Bishop of Waterford and Lismore

in the Church of Ireland

Church of Ireland

. In 1640 Atherton was accused of buggery

Buggery

with a man, John Childe, his steward and tithe

Tithe

A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural products...

proctor

Proctor

Proctor, a variant of the word procurator, is a person who takes charge of, or acts for, another. The word proctor is frequently used to describe someone who oversees an exam or dormitory.The title is used in England in three principal senses:...

. They were tried under a law that Atherton himself had helped to institute. They were both condemned to death, and Atherton was executed in Stephen's Green, Dublin. Reportedly, he confessed to the crime immediately before his execution, although he had proclaimed his innocence before that. More recently, some historical evidence has been developed that shows Atherton might have been a victim of a conspiracy

Conspiracy (political)

In a political sense, conspiracy refers to a group of persons united in the goal of usurping or overthrowing an established political power. Typically, the final goal is to gain power through a revolutionary coup d'état or through assassination....

to discredit him and his patrons . This was attributable to Atherton's status as an astute lawyer, who sought to recover lost land for the relatively weak Anglican Church of Ireland during the 1630s. Unfortunately for Atherton, this alienated him from large landowners, who then allegedly used his sexuality to discredit him.

Furthermore, English Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

activists were actively campaigning to abolish bishops within the embattled Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

, so they also had an interest in Atherton's downfall.

Posthumous accusations of sexual wrongdoing also include allegations of "incest" with his sister- in-law, and infanticide

Infanticide

Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...

of the resultant child, as well as zoophilia

Zoophilia

Zoophilia, from the Greek ζῷον and φιλία is the practice of sex between humans and non-human animals , or a preference or fixation on such practice...

with cattle. However, these allegations began to be circulated several months after his death in an anonymous pamphlet, and may have been intended to further discredit the bishop's campaign to restore the finances of the Anglican Church of Ireland

Life and death

Further reading