created Bermingham earl of Louth, and granted him the manor of Ardee in the same county. In 1321 he was appointed lord justice of Ireland, and next year he met King Edward at Carlisle to aid him against the Scots. In 1325 he founded the monastery of Tethmoy, since called from him Monasteroris (see helow), near Edenderry in King's County, the ruins of which are still to be seen. He was killed at Braganstown near Ardee in 1328, in a fierce quarrel that took place between some of the Anglo-Irish
families of Oriel; and many eminent persons, both native Irish and Anglo-Irish, were killed with him. The 'Four Masters' record the event in these words: 'Sir John MacFeorais, earl of Louth, the most vigorous, puissant, and hospitable of the English in Ireland, was treacherously slain by his own people, namely by the English of Oriel. With him also were slain many others of the English and Irish amongst whom was blind O'Carroll,
chief minstrel of Ireland and Scotland in his time.'
The Berminghams are called in Gaelic MacFeorais (pron. MacOris), i.e. the son of Feoras or Pierce Bermingham, one of the chief heads of the family settled in Ireland.
[Lodge's Peerage, by Archdall, iii. 33; Four Masters, A.D. 1318, 1328; Gilbert's Viceroys of Ireland, pp. 144-6; Joyce's Irish Names of Places, vol. ii. c. viii.]
BERMINGHAM, MICHEL (1685–fl. 1750) medical writer, was born in London in 1685 and became a member of the Academy of Surgery at Paris. He published: 1. Some documents in French and English belonging to the Hospital of Incurables in Paris, London 1720, 4to. 2. 'Manière de bien nourrir et soigner les enfants nouveau-nés,' 1750. 4to 3. A translation of the statutes of the doctors regent of the Faculty of Paris. An account by him of an excision of the parotid glands (1736) is preserved among the Birch MSS. (No. 4433, art. 155). There is an engraved portrait of him.
[Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, 232; Musgrave's Adversaria; Ayscough's Cat. of the Sloane and Birch MSS. 440, 521.]
BERMINGHAM, PATRICK (d. 1532) judge, was a native of Ireland, and succeed to the estates of his brother John in that country in 1483. He was appointed chief justice of the king's bench in Ireland on 2 Dec. 1513 (Pat. 5 Hen. VIII, pt. ii. m. 4), an office which he held until his death. In 1521 his patent of office, which was during pleasure, was renewed, and at the same time he obtained license to leave Ireland when he pleased. In this year he also received a grant of the chancellorship of the green wax of the exchequer in Ireland, in succession to Nicholas St. Lawrence, Lord Howth. In 1520 and following years his signature as one of the council is appended to the letters from the Earl of Surrey and Earl of Ormond, the king's deputies in Ireland; and at a later period (in 1528), when the Earl of Kildare, then deputy, had been sent for to England, and the country was disturbed by the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond and O'Conor, the responsibility of preserving order rested principally with him and Hugh Inge, archbishop of Dublin.
His death must have occurred late in 1532, as both his offices were filled up in January 1533, the judgeship being given to Sir Bartholomew Dillon, and the chancellorship of the green wax to Thomas Cusake. He left one son, William, who married Margaret, the daughter of Thomas St. Lawrence, justice of the King's Bench in Ireland in the reigns of Henry VlII, Edward VI, and Mary.
[Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII, vols. i. iii. iv. vi.; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, iii. 188; Pat. 1 Edw. V, m. 7.]
BERMINGHAM, WILLIAM (d. 1311), archbishop of Tuam, son of Meiler Bermingham, second lord of Athenry, and uncle of Sir John Bermingham, earl of Louth [q.v.]. was consecrated in 1289. In 1297 began the celebrated quarrel between him and the Dominican friars of Athenry. The archbishop, by his archdeacon Philip le Brand, held a visitation at Athenry, at which the friars were, in the usual course, summoned to appear. The friars, it seems, claimed exemption from the visitatorial powers of the archbishop; only three of them attended the the chapter, and thy delivered a protest so loudly and violently, and abused the archdeacon so grossly, that he excommunicated them. Immediately after the archbishop issued a proclamation forbidding the people to give them food of alms, or sell them anything, or enter the church. In this strait the friars applied to the lord chancellor, who issued a mandamus directing the archbishop to withdraw his proclamation forthwith . The archbishop's reply not being satisfactory, they proceeded against him through the attorney-general for his proclamation, and compelled him to give heavy security that he would cause the archdeacon to revoke all he had unduly done. They next took legal proceedings against the archdeacon, laying damages at 1 ,000l.; but the defendant, though pleading justification, did not appear on the day of trial, on which the sheriff issued a distraint against him. Here we lose sight of
