Hugh Boyd M‘Neile"M‘Neile", which was M‘Neile's preferred orthography, with conventional inverted comma, like a filled in "6"; not "M’Neile" with erect comma like a filled in "9". Despite the modern belief that "Mac" and "Mc" indicate names of Scottish and Irish origin respectively, "M‘Neile", "McNeile" and "MacNeile" were equivalent in M‘Neile's time. In some places his family name is given as "MacNeile", "Mac Neile" or "McNeile". (18 July 1795 – 28 January 1879) was a well-connected and controversial Irish-born Calvinist Anglican of Scottish descent.M‘Neile was descended from Scots who came to Ireland in 1610, with Randal MacDonnell (?–1636), First Earl of Antrim, to settle in King James I's Plantation of Ulster (Dublin University Magazine, 1847, p. 462).
He was anti-Tractarian and anti-Roman Catholic (and, even more so, anti-Anglo-Catholic) and an Evangelical and millenarian cleric,In 1838, Mourant Brock (1802–1856) had estimated that there were at least seven hundred of the English clergy were pre-milenialists (Advent Tracts, Vol. II, (1844), p.135); and, in 1855, "a commentator in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review … estimated that more than half of the evangelicals in the church favored millenarian views" (Sandeen, E.R., The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930, University of Chicago Press, p. 40). 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 Protestant Association had been inactive since the time of the "No Popery" Gordon Riots of 1780. This unrest, fomented by Lord George Gordon (1751–1793), was directed against the Irish in general, Roman Catholics in particular, the Government in general and, most particularly the Lord Chief Justice William Murray (1705–1793). The riots were in reaction to the passing of the first "Catholic Relief Act", the Papists Act (1788), that had attenuated some of the restrictions of the Popery Act (1698). The riots involved up to 60,000 people and resulted in widespread looting, significant destruction of churches and other property, including the private residence of the Lord Chief Justice, and many deaths. Ironically, Gordon later converted to Judaism (in 1787), adopting the name Israel Abraham George Gordon and remained a devout Jew for the remainder of his life.Inactive since Lord George Gordon’s "No Popery" riots in London in 1780, the Protestant Association re-emerged as an active force in 1835. M’Neile, one of its most active clerical participants, founded its Liverpool branch in 1837 or 1838 (Paz, 1992, p. 200). the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews,The Society, founded in 1809, emerged from a committee formed by the London Missionary Society two years earlier, in 1807, to work exclusively amongst London’s Jews. M‘Neile delivered the society’s annual sermon in both 1826 and 1846, as well as publishing a number of lectures and sermons related to Jews and Jewish matters: e.g., his Popular Lectures on the Prophecies Relative to the Jewish Nation (1830), revised and reissued as Prospects of the Jews; or, Popular Lectures on the Prophecies Relative to the Jewish Nation (1840). A letter written to his future wife (on 28 September 1841), by William Ballantyne Hodgson (1815–1880), describes M‘Neile’s position:
"Bigotry, encouraged by the want of opposition, speaks out more and more boldly [here in Liverpool]. "Every Jew, dying as a Jew, is irretrievably lost", said the Rev. Hugh McNeile the other day; "it is godlike love to tell them of their miserable condition; godless liberalism to conceal it from them". The tyranny of the priesthood is said to be great in Scotland, but really I think it is much worse here." (Meiklejohn, 1883, p. 36). the Irish Society,The Irish Society for Promoting the Education of the Native Irish through the Medium of Their Own Language. According to an advertisement placed by the Society in the end papers of Crockford (1868), the Society was established in 1818 and, in 1868, M‘Neile was one of its Vice Presidents. the Church Missionary Society, and the Church Association.Scotland (1997): "The Church Association … formed in 1865 … had as one of its avowed aims to fight ritualism in the courts by means of legal action. Many, such as Lord Shaftesbury, who had tried to introduce various bills into Parliament to curb ritualism were growing frustrated at their inability to do anything. The Church Association had a number of influential members including the Rev Dr William Wilson (Vicar of Holy Rood, Southampton), brother-in-law to the Bishop of Winchester. Canon Champneys, who was made Dean of Lichfield … [and M‘Neile]. "The purpose of the Association was "to uphold the doctrines, principles, and order of the United Church of England and Ireland, and to counteract the efforts now being made to pervert her teaching on essential points of Christian faith, or to assimilate the services to those of the Church of Rome, and to further encourage concerted action for the advancement and progress of spiritual religion". "The Church Association [sought] to effect these objects by publicity through lectures, meetings, and the use of the Press, by Appeals to the Courts of Law...’ in an effort to secure episcopal and other authoritative suppression of ceremonies, vestments and ornaments which had departed from the Church at the time of the Reformation."
M‘Neile was an influential demagogue, a renowned public speaker, an evangelical cleric and an opponent of "Popery","It is our intention to call the religion of the Church of Rome by the name of Popery, or Romanism, and not of Catholicism, and to designate the subjects of the Pope as Papists, or Romanists, and not as Catholics. As we reckon this a topic of some importance, and as it is one on which Papists are much in the habit of complaining and declaiming, we think it proper to explain, once for all, the grounds of the course we mean to pursue in this matter. The adherents of the Church of Rome always call themselves Catholics, and refuse this designation to all other professing Christians, while they resent it as an insult and an injury when they are styled Papists or Romanists. The grounds of the course we mean to follow in this matter of names may be embodied in these two positions:—1st, The adherents of the Church of Rome have no right to the designation of Catholics, they insult and injure Protestants by assuming it, and therefore it ought never to be conceded to them; and, 2d, Protestants do not insult and injure the adherents of the Church of Rome by calling them Papists or Romanists, but, on the contrary, employ, in doing so, a perfectly just, fair, and accurate designation…" (p. 22, "On the Use of the Names "Popery", and "Romanism", and "Papist" and "Romanist"", The Bulwark or, Reformation Journal: In Defence of the True Interests of Man and of Society, Especially in Reference to the Religious, Social and Political Bearings of Popery, Vol. 1, No. 2 (August 1851), pp. 22–25. who was inflamed by the increasing number of Irish Roman Catholics in Liverpool.In a private letter to Queen Victoria in 1869, advocating M‘Neile’s elevation to Dean of Ripon, Benjamin Disraeli, mentioned that "[M‘Neile] is a great orator, and one of those whose words, at periods of national excitement, influence opinion". The response, written on the Queen’s behalf, by Major General Sir Thomas Myddleton Biddulph, the joint Keeper of the Privy Purse, spoke directly of the Queen’s reluctance:
"However great Dr. McNeile's attainments may be, and however distinguished he may be as speaker, the Queen believes he has chiefly rendered himself conspicuous by his hostility to the Roman Catholic Church. The Queen would ask whether his appointment is not likely to stir up a considerable amount of ill-feeling among the Roman Catholics, and in the minds of those who sympathise with them …" (Buckle (1926a), pp. 533–534). He was known for his stirring oratory, his immoderate preaching, and his many publications.More than 100 of his works are listed at List of works by Hugh Boyd M‘Neile. He was loved, admired and respected by some"Unquestionably the greatest Evangelical preacher and speaker in the Church of England during this century" (Stock, 1899, p.376); "universally known… as one of the most powerful instruments ever raised up to arm the church in troublous days… No man living has been so grossly, so impudently, calumniated in the face of all evidence; no man is so notoriously dreaded by the workers of seditious evil in church and state; and perhaps no man on earth is so ardently, so extensively loved by all classes of right-minded people." ("Charlotte Elizabeth", (1840), p. 143.) and he was an object of derision and scorn for others."A bold bad Irishman"; "this politico-religious firebrand"; "the factitious bigotry [evoked by] this dangerous man" (Thomas Earnshaw Bradley (1820–1866) in Bradley, 1852, p. 393). "Probably the most eloquent, the most able and the most consistent religious agitator of his day" (James Murphy, 1959, p. 51). "A bigoted divine, who enjoys unfortunately a very extensive popularity" (William North (1825–1854), 1845, I, p. 174.).
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.In the latter part of the 1870s the Revd Hugh M‘Neile of Ripon was registered as owning 699 acres in County Antrim, Ireland. 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,He served from February to December 1868 and February 1874 to April 1880 respectively. It was during this time that he exerted sufficient pressure on the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), to have his uncle-by-marriage, Hugh M‘Neile, appointed as Dean of Ripon and his nephew, William Connor Magee (1821–1891), appointed as to Bishop of Peterborough. and as (opposition) Conservative Leader in the House of Lords (1869–1870).