Magrath, Meiler (c. 1523–1622)

Irish ecclesiastic, notorious for the flexibility of his attitudes towards the Reformation in Ireland, which his critics claimed were unprincipled. A Franciscan friar, he was appointed papal bishop of Down and Connor in 1565 but, with his acceptance of the royal supremacy in 1570, was made Church of Ireland archbishop of Cashel in 1571, a position he held with an accumulation of lesser sees until his death. Though regarded with suspicion by Protestants and contempt by Catholics, Magrath was, in fact, a shrewd observer of men and affairs. His memoranda on the politics of Ulster and the Munster plantation in the 1580s and 1590s remain invaluable to historians, and deserved to have exerted more influence over English administrators than they did.