William Reeves (bishop) - Life and Work

Life and Work

In 1838, he was appointed Master of the diocesan school in Ballymena, County Antrim, and was ordained a deacon of Hillsborough. The next year, he was ordained a priest of the Church of Ireland at Derry.

In 1844, Reeves rediscovered the lost site of Nendrum Monastery when he visited Mahee Island in Strangford Lough, County Down, searching for churches recorded in 1306, and recognized the remains of a round tower.

By 1845, Reeves was corresponding with the Irish scholar John O'Donovan, and an archive of their letters between 1845 and 1860 is preserved at University College, Dublin. In July 1845, Reeves visited London.

Reeves's career was furthered by his learned work. His first book, published in 1847, was his Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor and Dromore, but by then he was already a member of the Royal Irish Academy. By the time he published his Acts of Archbishop Colton (1850) he was also a Doctor of divinity. In 1850, as in 1847, he was Perpetual Curate of Kilconriola.

Reeves resided in Ballymena from 1841 to 1858, when he was appointed vicar of Lusk following the success of his edition of Adomnán's Life of Saint Columba (1857). He had worked on this with Dr James Henthorn Todd, who was patron of the living at Lusk. Reeves's edition of Adomnán's Life of Columba has been called "the best and fullest collection of materials on the early Irish Church in one volume". With regard to the Celtic Church, Reeves himself described Adomnán's work as –

...an inestimable literary relic... perhaps, with all its defects, the most valuable monument of that ancient institution which has escaped the ravages of time.

In 1853, Reeves bought from the Brownlow family the important 9th-century manuscript known as the Book of Armagh, paying three hundred pounds for it. He sold the book for the same sum to Archbishop Beresford, who had agreed to present it to Trinity, Reeves's alma mater.

Crockford's Clerical Directory for 1868 gives him as "Reeves, William, DD, Rural Dean, Rector of Tynan, Librarian Armagh Library (Armagh)".

Reeves was a friend of Margaret Stokes and with his colleague Todd is credited with setting off her interest in Irish antiquities.

The author and antiquarian Samuel Ferguson wrote of Reeves in 1867:

It is in order and presentation of his facts that this great master of Scottish topographical history – using the word Scottish in its old acceptation – excels all who have gone before him.

In 1886, Reeves was appointed as Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, and in 1891 was elected as President of the Royal Irish Academy. As bishop, he resided at Conway House, Dunmurry, County Antrim, and signed his name "Wm. Down and Connor".

Reeves died in Dublin on 12 January 1892, while still President of the Academy. At the time of his death, he was working on a diplomatic edition of the Book of Armagh, by then in the Trinity College Library. The work was completed by Dr John Gwynn and published in 1913.

In November 1889, Reeves had bought the important collection of Irish manuscripts of Robert Shipboy MacAdam (1808–1895), a Belfast business man and archaeologist. In 1892, after Reeves's death, this collection was bought for the Royal Irish Academy by the Rev. Maxwell Close and is still held by the Academy, under the name of 'The Mac Adam and Reeves Collection'.

Mary, Lady Ferguson, the widow of Reeves's friend Sir Samuel Ferguson, published a biography in 1893, The Life of the Right Rev. William Reeves, DD, Lord Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, and this reproduces a portrait of him.

A Catalogue of the Library of the Late Right Rev. William Reeves (1892) contains sections relating to the Royal Irish Academy, Scotland, Ireland, the Athanasian Creed, the Utrecht Psalter, the Old Testament, and 'Household Furniture'.

In 1941 Reeves's papers, including some in the Irish language, were donated to Marsh's Library by Dean Webster.

Reeves's Notices of Certain Crannogs... in the Counties of Antrim and Londonderry (1860) and his The Culdees of the British Islands (1864) both appeared in new editions in 1994.