Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Brady, William Maziere
BRADY, William Maziere, D.D., youngest son of the late Sir N. W. Brady, and nephew to Sir Maziere Brady, Baronet, late Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, was born at Dublin in 1825, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a prizeman in classics. He was appointed Chaplain to Earl Clarendon, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in 1851; was subsequently Chaplain to Earl St. Germans and to the Earl of Carlisle, during their respective vice-royalties, and was re-appointed to the same office by Earl Spencer. He became rector of Farrahy, co. Cork, in 1851; held afterwards the vicarage of Newmarket, in the same county, and became rector of Kilberry and vicar of Donoughpatrick, in the diocese and county of Meath. Dr. Maziere Brady has written much upon various historical, antiquarian, and political subjects in many of the newspapers and magazines of the day, and notably in Fraser and the Contemporary Review. His sermon preached in the Chapel Royal, Dublin, towards the end of Lord Carlisle's vice-royalty, in which he openly denounced the wickedness of the State Church in Ireland, which applied the whole of the ancient ecclesiastical revenues for the benefit of a mere fraction of the people, excited astonishment, and was strongly censured by the organs of the Conservative party, and led to Dr. Brady's omission from the list of chaplains under Lord Kimberley's lieutenancy. The works published by Dr. Brady are "Clerical and Parochial Records of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross," 3 vols.; "Remarks on Irish Church Temporalities;" "Facts or Fictions;" "The McGillicuddy Papers;" "The Irish Reformation; or, the Alleged Conversion of the Irish Bishops at the Accession of Queen Elizabeth; and the assumed descent of the present Established Hierarchy in Ireland from the ancient Irish Church Disproved;" "State Papers concerning the Irish Church in the Time of Queen Elizabeth;" and "Essays on the English State Church in Ireland," 1869. Dr. Brady's writings undoubtedly facilitated the progress of Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church Abolition Bill, and were copiously quoted in and out of Parliament. His work on the Irish Reformation went through five editions, and provoked innumerable replies. Upon the passing of the Irish Church Act, Dr. Brady, whose health had been seriously affected by an attack of bronchitis, went to Rome, and from the archives there extracted many particulars concerning the ecclesiastical affairs of England, Scotland, and Ireland. He afterwards resigned his rectory of Donoughpatrick, and was received into the Catholic Church by Mgr. Kirby, of the Irish College at Rome, in May, 1873. He has since written a learned work on "The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland, and Ireland," the third volume of which was published at Rome in 1877.