We tend to begin any tale of the late bishop with his arrival on the quay of Charleston. We depict the man as if he had sprung from the Cooper River fully formed, decimating anti-Catholic rhetoric with his wit and spouting sermons that drew the Protestant aristocracy of the city to his barn-turned-cathedral by the hundreds. However, John England had a life before coming to South Carolina, concealed in the mystery of Ireland, the ancestral homeland of so many of his new American flock.

England was born on Sept. 23, 1786, to Thomas and Honora Lordan. Immediately upon mention of his birth, we find ourselves immersed in Irish intrigue. Why did John England’s parents have a different last name from their children? This was because “England” was a pseudonym. Young John’s father was a fugitive, and his crime was being Catholic. Due to Thomas England’s status as a fugitive, dates and names related to his history are uncertain.

Thomas England’s father had been a man of moderate wealth and firm faith. When ordered to recant his faith and take up protestantism, the patriarch refused and was thrown in jail. The local Protestant bishop seized the family property and turned Thomas and his ailing mother out into the streets. Thomas, only 17, supported his mother with his meager salary as a Catholic schoolmaster. She did not survive long, and when she passed, the same Protestant bishop approached Thomas with the temptation — become a Protestant or else.

Thomas fled Tipperary and eked out his living as a land surveyor, one of the few professions that did not exclude Catholics. Eventually, Thomas made his way to Cork with a new name to start a new family. We do not know if Thomas’ last name had originally been Lordan or if that had simply been Honora’s maiden name. Either way, it was the future bishop, John, that first legally bore the name “England.”

The young John grew up as many Catholics did in a Protestant-controlled Ireland: attending a Protestant school in which the schoolmasters tried to drive the papist spirit out of the young boy. They failed, much to their consternation. “John England is a naughty boy,” one schoolmaster penned in England’s elementary primer, “for he refuses to learn how to dance.” These were, of course, proper English dances, not traditional Irish jigs and reels that John preferred.

The boy grew into an intelligent young man. Initially studying law, he quickly realized, however, that the emancipation of the Irish from England would not come through legal action but rather religious ministry. England’s time in the seminary at Carlow was far from typical. A diligent student, England was quickly recognized for his intellect and excellent skill as a teacher. By his 1808 ordination to the priesthood, not only had the local bishop appointed him as the Lenten lecturer at his cathedral, but the young man had also “left at Carlow … enduring monuments of his untiring zeal and active benevolence, in an asylum for unprotected females and schools for free and correct education of poor boys.” After being granted permission from Pope Pius VII to be ordained early, he received holy orders on Oct. 11, 1808.

The future bishop’s life as a priest was no less remarkable than his time as a seminarian. His first assignment was that of a convent chaplain, a post dear to his heart and one he would hold for a decade. He accumulated other important roles quickly within the diocese: prison chaplain, catechist and lecturer at the cathedral and rector of the new seminary of Cork.

As rector, John England began to engage in the national debate on the legalization of the Catholic Church in Ireland. He defended the Church’s right to choose its own bishops without outside government influence. Unfortunately, this was not a question of Catholic interests against those of the British government. Father England was pitted against English Catholic bishops who sought to continue to exert their national influence over their Irish counterparts.

In 1817, the young priest was appointed pastor at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in the town of Bandon. It was an infamous assignment. Catholics were not welcome there. Over the gates to the city read a sign, “Enter here Turk, Jew or Atheist. Every man but a Papist.” The animosity against Catholics was so great that the Protestants of the city attempted to assassinate Father England as he made his way through the town to administer the anointing of the sick. But for the priest, this didn’t matter, and over the next three years, he worked tirelessly to reconcile the Protestants and Catholics of the city.

The bishops of Ireland quickly recognized John England’s calling as a future bishop, but they were in somewhat of a dilemma. His opposition to English interference in the selection of Irish bishops would exclude him from being considered for a diocese within Ireland. And, while the Irish Catholic Church was not allowed to freely govern themselves, Father England refused to become a bishop anywhere within the British Empire. The answer quickly became clear: he was to serve God as a bishop in America.

On Sep. 21, 1820, John England was consecrated the new bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, at St. Finn Barre’s Church in Cork. With his consecration, he was granted a new people, a new nation to take into his care. John England’s life in Ireland was a reflection of his later work, first in the Diocese of Charleston and later within the United States. Those hidden years of devoted ministry and humble service in Ireland molded Rt. Rev. England into the leader that South Carolinian Catholics so desperately needed.