Fr. Nicholas Mayler (d. 1653)

Fr. Nicholas Mayler is one of many Irish Catholic priests who were killed during the Panel Laws in Ireland. Fr. Nicholas was killed by English troops while celebrating Holy Mass on Christmas Day 1653 at Tomhaggard Mass Rock, Co. Wexford.

By Fr. Jim Doyle

Tomhaggard Mass Rock, where Fr. Nicholas Mayler was killed in 1653. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)

We don’t know a lot about the early life of Fr. Nicholas Mayler except that he appears to have been a cousin of the Mayler family of Duncormack in south County Wexford, a Norman family which occupied the manor in Duncormack until 1641.[1]  However, we do know plenty about the difficult times that Fr. Mayler lived and died in. 

“In 1653 Ireland was an impoverished and persecuted land. In 1652 Cromwell’s soldiers had defeated the Royalist and Irish Catholic Confederate armies, ending the Eleven Years War. Guerrilla warfare continued in its wake for a further year.”[2]

Fr. Jim Doyle. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)

This contemporary report from the Jesuit Irish Mission tells us about the sad situation:

“Accordingly, on January 6th, 1653, there issued against the Catholics an edict of Cromwell, commanding all priests, under pain of death, to leave Ireland within twenty days.  The same penalty, together with the forfeiture of all of their property, was denounced against all laymen who should dare to harbour or protect any ecclesiastic in any way or for any pretext whatsoever… The clergy suffered many and grievous persecutions under former English Governors, but before this time they were never reduced to the lowest extreme of misery.  However severe the persecutions may have been in former times, the nobles and other Catholics, who formed the great majority of the nation, were allowed to retain possession of their lands and houses, which offered to the clergy an easy and secure retreat.  But now the whole face of things is changed, since the nobles and almost all the Catholics are driven from the cities, and the houses of the nobility are turned into garrisons of the heretics.”[3]

Around the same time the Bishop of Kilmacduagh in Co. Galway writes to the Cardinal Protector:

“A very close search was made for priests and ecclesiastics throughout the whole kingdom.  Those who were captured were placed on board ship and transported to foreign countries, Spain, France, Belgium or the Indies, as a ship offered without any provisions being supplied for their support, after seizing all their goods and money.  Not one of ten of ecclesiastics has escaped this search, and those who have escaped lead a life of extreme misery concealed in the mountains and forests.  All day long they hid in caves, and at night they come out for a few hours to minister to the spiritual wants of Catholics.”[4]

An Irish Penal Cross, for use at Clandestine Masses. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)

It is in this context that we can understand the plight of Fr. Mayler.  Fr. Mayler was the parish priest of Tacumshane and Tomhaggard.[5]  These are two small villages on the shores of Linkstown lake on the very south coast of Co. Wexford.  Tomhaggard has a long Christian history with the ruins of a Norman Church built supposedly on the site of an older Gaelic monastery.  It was near Tomhaggard, at a place called Knock of Furze[6] overlooking Linkstown lake, that the Mass Rock was hidden where Fr. Mayler celebrated Holy Mass. The Mass Rock itself, which is still in place, consisted of a piece of a stone window arch placed on the side of a ditch in a hidden corner of a field. The stone was probably taken from the old Norman Church which would mark the continuity of practicing the faith down through the centuries.[7] Fr. Mayler used to live with his brother Thomas Mayler in Ballyhealy in the parish of Kilmore,[8] which would only be a few miles from the Mass Rock.  But tradition has it that at the time of his martyrdom he was hiding out on Ballyhealy beach.

Then on Christmas morning 1653, while celebrating Mass in secret at the Mass Rock, a cry went out from one of the congregation that Cromwellian soldiers were seen in the glen below the Mass rock.  Their position had been betrayed and Fr. Mayler was about to pay the ultimate price.  But before he was ruthlessly shot dead he gave his chalice and patten to a brave parishioner, Mrs Lambert, who hid the chalice in Linkstown lake, before recovering it when it was safe to do so.  “She returned it to the Mayler family in whose possession it remained for 236 years.”[9]  A descendant of Fr. Mayler, Archdeacon Philip Mayler, Parish Priest of Kilmore from 1850 to 1884, returned the chalice to the little chapel of Tomhaggard.

As for Fr. Mayler, he was reputedly buried with his kinsfolk within the ruins of the old Norman Church in Tomhaggard.[10]  For many centuries his grave was left unmarked but venerated as that of a martyr.  But in recent years he has been commemorated with a grave stone.  He is one of those brave men who risked his life to celebrate Holy Mass to honour God and to nourish the faith of his people.  His death on Christmas morning 1653 links him intimately to his Lord Jesus, who was also threatened with death by Herod at the time of his birth.  Being called Fr. Nicholas he is also linked to the famous Bishop Martyr St. Nicholas so associated with Christmas.  The Church has a long tradition of considering those who die for the faith as martyrs to also be saints.  Hence it is fitting that a new tradition began in 1999 of celebrating Holy Mass on Christmas morning at the Mass Rock where Fr. Mayler shed his blood in union with that of his Lord Jesus Christ.  It is also fitting that for this Mass the priest uses Fr. Mayler’s chalice and paten (dated 1652) – a relic of a martyr, a vessel of the Body and Blood of Christ. 

Lord, keep us faithful to you and be our rock through all the trials of life.

[1] https://www.libraryireland.com/Pedigrees2/meyler.php

[2] https://paintinginwhite.wordpress.com/2017/11/06/the-fighting-irish-and-getting-off-fences/

[3] Report of the Irish Missions, S.J., in 1654. Spic. Ossor., i.40. (Footnote 136 in Our Martyrs, Fr. Denis Murphy, Dublin, Fallon & Co., originally printed 1896, reprinted 2021, p 26).

[4] Spic Ossor., i.405. (Footnote 138 in Our Martyrs, p 27).

[5] https://www.libraryireland.com/Pedigrees2/meyler.php

[6] Hilary Murphy, Mass-house link to penal days, in Tomhaggard – a sacred place, Tomhaggard Heritage Group, Wexford: Viking Print, 2002, p 18.

[7] Ibid.

[8] https://www.libraryireland.com/Pedigrees2/meyler.php

[9] Hilary Murphy, Mass-house link to penal days, p 18.

[10] Ibid.