as ‘Secretary to the sub-committee of the Catholics of Ireland.’
Sweetman was an active United Irishman. He was a member of the Leinster directory of the revolutionary organisation, and some of the most important meetings of its executive committee took place at his brewery in Francis Street, Dublin. He was arrested with other leaders of the movement on 12 March 1798. Seeing that all hope of a successful insurrection was over, they entered into a compact with the government, by which, in consideration of a promise of the suspension of the executions of United Irishmen, they made a full disclosure of their objects and plans, without implicating individuals, before committees of the lords and commons. Sweetman was one of the group sent to Fort George in Scotland early in 1799. In June 1802 they were deported to Holland and set at liberty. After eighteen years of exile Sweetman was permitted to return to Ireland in 1820. He died in May 1826, and was buried at Swords, outside Dublin. He married, in 1784, Mary Atkinson, the daughter of a Dublin brewer.
Sweetman was one of the few catholics of position who belonged to the organisation of United Irishmen as a revolutionary conspiracy. Of the twenty leaders consigned to Fort George, ten were episcopalians, six were presbyterians, and only four (including Sweetman) were catholics. Wolfe Tone, writing in his journal in France under date 1 March 1798, on hearing a rumour of Sweetman's death, said: ‘If ever an exertion was to be made for our emancipation, he would have been in the very foremost rank. I had counted upon his military talents.’
[Madden's United Irishmen; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; MacNevin's Pieces of Irish History; Wolfe Tone's Autobiography.]
SWEETMAN, MILO (d. 1380), archbishop of Armagh, a native of Ireland, came of an Anglo-Irish family (cf. Cal. Rot. Claus. et Pat. Hiberniæ, Index Nominum). A Maurice Sweetman was archdeacon of Armagh in 1365 (Cotton, Fasti, iii. 44). Milo was appointed treasurer of the cathedral of Ossory or Kilkenny before 1360, in which year the chapter elected him bishop of that diocese. He proceeded to the papal court for confirmation, but on his arrival found that Innocent VI had already provided John de Tatenhale to the vacant see. The archbishopric of Armagh, however, being also vacant through the death of Richard Fitzralph [q. v.], the pope, as a consolation, bestowed it on Sweetman. Three years later Innocent's successor, Urban V, by a bull dated 9 Nov. 1363, translated Patrick Magonail, bishop of Raphoe, to the see of Armagh, either in ignorance of Sweetman's appointment or on a false report of his death. No notice was taken of this bull, and Magonail remained bishop of Raphoe until his death in 1366.
In 1365 Sweetman became involved in the perennial struggle of the archbishops of Armagh to assert their rights of primacy over the other Irish archbishops, and especially the archbishop of Dublin. The dispute about bearing the cross in each other's province became so acute between Sweetman and Thomas Minot, archbishop of Dublin, that on 9 June 1365 Edward III wrote ordering the two archbishops to observe the compromise arrived at between the archbishops of Canterbury and York, whereby each was entitled to have his crozier borne before him in the other's province. Sweetman refused, asserting his superiority over the diocese of Dublin (Rymer, vi. 467); he seems to have carried his point, and on 3 Oct. following Minot was summoned before the deputy, Lionel, duke of Clarence, for contempt in not meeting and agreeing with Sweetman. From that date the controversy subsided until the time of Richard Talbot (d. 1449) [q. v.], archbishop of Dublin.
Sweetman was present at the parliament of 1367 which passed the famous statute of Kilkenny. In 1374 Sir William de Windsor [q. v.], the lord deputy, acting on instructions from the English government, made an attempt to dispense with the Irish parliament, and issued writs ordering the clergy and laity to elect representatives and send them to Westminster. Sweetman took the lead in opposing this demand; in a letter (printed in Stuart's Armagh, pp. 190–1, from Rawlinson MS. SS. 7) he maintained that the inhabitants of the Pale were not bound to send representatives to Westminster, and, though in deference to Edward III the clergy elected representatives who repaired to Westminster, they were instructed by their constituents to refuse their assent to any subsidies or other imposts. This was the main object of their being summoned, and the attempt was not repeated (Leland, Hist. of Ireland, i. 328; Richey, Lectures on Irish Hist. i. 199–200).
In 1375 Sweetman, as metropolitan, visited the diocese of Meath and confirmed the charters of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin. On 20 Nov. in the same year, and again on 22 Jan. 1377–8, in the first year of Richard II, he was summoned to parliament (Cal. Rot. Hib. pp. 90 et seq.). He died at his manor of Dromeskyn, co. Louth, on 11 Aug. 1380
