The Most Reverend Dr. Thomas Nulty or Thomas McNulty (1818-1898) was born to a farming family in Fennor, Oldcastle, Co. Meath, on 7 July 1818, and died in office as the Irish Roman Catholic

Bishop of Meath The Bishop of Meath is an episcopal title which takes its name after the ancient Kingdom of Meath. In the Roman Catholic Church it remains as a separate title, but in the Church of Ireland it has been united with another bishopric. History Un ...

on Christmas Eve, 1898.

Biography

Nulty was educated at Gilson School,

Oldcastle, County Meath Oldcastle () is a town in County Meath, Ireland. It is located in the north-west of the county near the border with Cavan, approximately 13 miles (21 km) from Kells. The R154 and R195 regional roads cross in the town's market square. A ...

, St. Finians,

Navan Navan ( ; , meaning "the Cave") is the county town of County Meath, Ireland. In 2016, it had a population of 30,173, making it the tenth largest settlement in Ireland. It is at the confluence of the River Boyne and Blackwater, around 50&nb ...

Seminary and

Maynooth College St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth ( ga, Coláiste Naoimh Phádraig, Maigh Nuad), is the "National Seminary for Ireland" (a Roman Catholic college), and a pontifical university, located in the town of Maynooth, from Dublin, Ireland ...

. He was ordained in 1846. Nulty was a cleric during the Great Famine. During the course of his first pastoral appointment, he officiated at an average 11 funerals of famine victims (mostly children or the aged) a day, and in 1848 he described a large-scale eviction of 700 tenants in the diocese, thought to have been near

Lough Sheelin Lough Sheelin (), in standard Irish ''Loch Síleann'', is a limestone freshwater lough (lake) in central Ireland. The lake is a part of the River Inny course, and ultimately of the Shannon system. Geography and geology Lough Sheelin lies at ...

, a freshwater

lough ''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch. In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised sp ...

at a meeting point of Counties

Westmeath "Noble above nobility" , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Westmeath.svg , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Ireland , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = , subdivis ...

, Meath and

Cavan Cavan ( ; ) is the county town of County Cavan in Ireland. The town lies in Ulster, near the border with County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. The town is bypassed by the main N3 road that links Dublin (to the south) with Enniskillen, Bal ...

. Nulty rose to become the Most Reverend Bishop of Meath and was known as a fierce defender of the

tenant rights Tenant may refer to: Real estate *Tenant, the holder of a leasehold estate in real estate *Tenant-in-chief, in feudal land law *Tenement (law), the holder of a legal interest in real estate *Tenant farmer *Anchor tenant, one of the larger stores ...

of Irish

tenant farmer A tenant farmer is a person (farmer or farmworker) who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, ...

s throughout the 34 years that he served in that office, from 1864 to 1898. Nulty was in agreement with the economic ideas of the progressive reformer

Henry George Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of the Progressive Era. He inspired the eco ...

. Nulty read George's book ''

Progress and Poverty ''Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy'' is an 1879 book by social theorist and economist Henry George. It is a treatise on the questions of why pover ...

'' multiple times and agreed with every word. Henry George even said that '

Georgism Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism, and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—includi ...

' could just as well be known as 'Nultyism'. Thomas Nulty is famed for his 1881 tract ''Back to the Land'', wherein he makes the case for

land reform Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultura ...

of the Irish land tenure system. Nulty was a friend and supporter of the Irish nationalist

Charles Stewart Parnell Charles Stewart Parnell (27 June 1846 – 6 October 1891) was an Irish nationalist politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1875 to 1891, also acting as Leader of the Home Rule League from 1880 to 1882 and then Leader of t ...

until Parnell's divorce crisis in 1889. Dr. Thomas Nulty, who had attended the

First Vatican Council The First Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the First Vatican Council or Vatican I was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864. This, the twentieth ecu ...

in 1870, said his last mass on 21 December 1898.

References

External links

Catholic HierarchyCopy of 31 December 1881 letter from Thomas Nulty to the Dublin ''Freeman'' newspaper
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nulty, Thomas 1818 births 1898 deaths 19th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland Roman Catholic bishops of Meath Alumni of St Patrick's College, Maynooth Irish land reform activists People from County Meath People educated at St Finian's College