Milo Sweetman (died

1380 Year 1380 ( MCCCLXXX) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–December * February – Olaf II of Denmark also becomes Olaf IV of Norway, with his mother M ...

) was a fourteenth-century Irish Archbishop of Armagh, who was noted for his fierce defence of the privileges of his archdiocese. He was

treasurer A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The significant core functions of a corporate treasurer include cash and liquidity management, risk management, and corporate finance. Government The treasury ...

of the

Diocese of Ossory The Bishop of Ossory () is an episcopal title which takes its name after the ancient of Kingdom of Ossory in the Province of Leinster, Ireland. In the Roman Catholic Church it remains a separate title, but in the Church of Ireland it has been ...

by 1360, and in that year he was elected Bishop of Ossory by the Cathedral Chapter. His election was cancelled by Pope Innocent VI in favour of John de Tatenhale, who had already been promised the see. However in the following year as a "consolation prize" Innocent appointed him to the vacant office of Archbishop of Armagh. Sweetman revived the old controversy as to whether the Archbishop of Armagh had primacy over the Archbishop of Dublin, a claim which successive Archbishops of Dublin had always denied. He and Thomas Minot, Archbishop of Dublin from 1363 to 1375, maintained the dispute with such vehemence that

King Edward III Edward III (13 November 1312 – 21 June 1377), also known as Edward of Windsor before his accession, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from January 1327 until his death in 1377. He is noted for his military success and for restoring ...

intervened personally in 1365, urging the two men to live in friendship and proposing that they settle the matter as a similar controversy between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the

Archbishop of York The archbishop of York is a senior bishop in the Church of England, second only to the archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of York and the metropolitan bishop of the province of York, which covers th ...

had been resolved i.e. by each bearing his crozier in the other's presence. Sweetman replied at length insisting on the claim of Armagh to primacy and pointing out that Minot had failed to attend a meeting which had been convened to discuss the matter. This letter clearly had an effect, since Minot was summoned before the Privy Council of Ireland to answer a charge of contempt of Parliament in failing to attend the meeting. Having thus asserted his authority, Sweetman was content to let the matter lapse, and no further action was taken against Minot. The controversy remained dormant for some decades, but flared up again in the fifteenth century. D'Alton, John, ''Memoirs of the Archbishops of Dublin'' Hodges and Smith Dublin 1838, pp. 138-141 Sweetman was present at the Irish Parliament of 1367 which passed the

Statutes of Kilkenny The Statutes of Kilkenny were a series of thirty-five acts enacted by the Parliament of Ireland at Kilkenny in 1366, aiming to curb the decline of the Hiberno-Norman Lordship of Ireland. Background to the Statutes By the middle decades of the ...

. In 1374 he defeated an attempt by the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir William de Windsor, to dispense with the Irish Parliament by ordering the clergy and laity of

the Pale The Pale (Irish: ''An Pháil'') or the English Pale (' or ') was the part of Ireland directly under the control of the English government in the Late Middle Ages. It had been reduced by the late 15th century to an area along the east coast st ...

to attend the

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. Sweetman argued that they had no such obligation, and that while out of deference to the King they would answer the summons they would not vote any taxation. Since this deprived the exercise of any point, it was not repeated. Having governed the Primatial See for nineteen years he died in 1380, and is buried in

Dromiskin Dromiskin (historically ''Druminisklin'', from ) is a village and townland in County Louth, Ireland. It is situated 10 km south of Dundalk, about 1 km inland from the Irish coast. History The village was home to a monastery for h ...

, Co. Louth. He is one of the first recorded Sweetmans in Irish history: Maurice Sweetman, Archdeacon of Armagh, is likely to have been a nephew or cousin of Milo. Richard Sweetman was Abbot of the

Abbey An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns. The con ...

of Saint Thomas the Martyr, in the city of

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...

, in 1306.

References

1380 deaths Archbishops of Armagh 14th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland Year of birth unknown {{Ireland-RC-bishop-stub