A graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford, he was appointed the Dean of Waterford on 9 March 1547.[1] Four years later, Walsh was nominated the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore by Edward VI of England on 9 June 1551[2][3] and was consecrated by royal mandate on 23 October 1551.[2][3][4] He retained the deanery of Waterford until he resigned it on 15 June 1566.[1] After the accession of Queen Mary I, Walsh was recognized bishop by the Holy See in 1555/1556.[5][6] But following the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, Walsh supported the crown's reformation legislation in the 1560 Irish Parliament. In a letter of 12 October 1561, the papal legate Fr David Wolfe SJ described all the bishops in Munster as 'adherents of the Queen'.[7] Bishop Walsh was appointed to an ecclesiastical commission for enforcing the royal supremacy in June 1564. Described as a 'crypto-catholic' in 1577, Walsh had custody of the papal Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, Edmund Tanner, who described him as 'the heretical bishop of Waterford';[8] and persuaded him to make a 'strictly private' rejection of the Protestant faith.[9]
Bishop Walsh died in 1578,[2][3][4] and was described as a 'confirmed heretic' by the Franciscan Thomas Strange.[10]
^Rigg, J.M. (1916–26). Calendar of state papers relating to English affairs : preserved principally at Rome in the Vatican archives and library. London - H M Stationery Office. p. 49, No. 108.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Bolster, Evelyn (1982). A history of the Diocese of Cork : from the Reformation to the Penal Era. Cork. p. 77.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Anthony M. McCormack and Terry Clavin, "Walsh, Patrick", Dictionary of Irish Biography, (Eds.) James Mcguire and James Quinn, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
^Henry A Jeffries, 'The Irish Parliament of 1560', Irish Historical Studies 26 (1989) P. 137.
Cotton, Henry (1851). The Province of Munster. Fasti Ecclesiae Hiberniae: The Succession of the Prelates and Members of the Cathedral Bodies of Ireland. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). Dublin: Hodges and Smith.
Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I., eds. (1986). Handbook of British Chronology (3rd, reprinted 2003 ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-56350-X.
Moody, T. W.; Martin, F. X.; Byrne, F. J., eds. (1984). Maps, Genealogies, Lists: A Companion to Irish History, Part II. A New History of Ireland. Vol. IX. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-821745-5.
Religious titles
Preceded byNicholas Comyn(Church of Ireland)
Bishop of Waterford and Lismore 1551–1578
Succeeded byMarmaduke Middleton(Church of Ireland)
Preceded byJohn Magrath(Roman Catholic)
Succeeded byJohn White (vicar apostolic)(Roman Catholic)