Duffy (O'Duffy), Hugh (Ó DUFAIGH, Cúchonnacht)

by Éamonn Ó Ciardha

Duffy (O'Duffy), Hugh (Ó DUFAIGH, Cúchonnacht) (c.1640–1721?), Franciscan friar and witness against Archbishop Oliver Plunkett (qv), was probably a member of the ‘Mac A'Parson’ branch of the O'Duffy family of Clontibret, Co. Monaghan, that fostered Fr Felim O'Neill, OFM, son of the executed confederate catholic Sir Phelim O'Neill (qv), ‘Féilimí na ndóiteán’, of Kinard, Co. Tyrone. Hugh Duffy was probably the son of Cownagh (Cúchonnacht) O'Duffy of Kilmore in nearby Tyholland. Little is known of his early life or education, though he probably spent time on the Continent. He had returned by 1672 to Ireland, where he received faculties as a confessor of regulars on 21 November of that year. Duffy also had considerable influence within the Irish Franciscan province as a consequence of his family's fosterage of Fr Felim. He also became curate to Edmund Murphy, parish priest of Killevy on the Armagh–Louth border. Later, at the trial of Archbishop Plunkett, Duffy claimed that he had been also chaplain to his relative Bishop Patrick Duffy (qv) of Clogher (d. 1675). Both Hugh Duffy and Murphy had kinsmen among the ‘tories’, local bandits who held sway in the Fews area and its environs. Their illicit activities brought them into contact with Redmond O'Hanlon (qv), the arch-tory, and his band. Only the intervention of Cormac Raver O'Murphy, O'Hanlon's rival and kinsman to Fr Edmund, saved their lives.

Duffy's associations with the tories and clerical irregularities drew on himself the unwelcome attention of Primate Plunkett. Whatever his crimes or misdemeanours, the principal chapter of the Franciscan order which met in Athlone (August 1678) declared him incorrigible and suspended him from the order. By the time decrees were again published against him by the order (April 1680) he was well and truly associated with the plots of John MacMoyer (qv) and Edmund Murphy (qv) against Archbishop Plunkett and Bishop Tyrrell (qv), although he had not given evidence against Plunkett at his abortive trial in Dundalk on 23–4 July 1680. However, at the outset of Plunkett's second trial in London (January 1681) his old superior Murphy promised that his former curate could provide damning evidence against the primate. Duffy arrived in London soon afterwards at government expense. Duffy's supreme confidence in the witness box, his knowledge of the movements and activities of prominent Ulster churchmen, and his clever manipulation of the primate's activities to link him with a fantastic French ‘plot’ enamoured him to the English bench. Indeed, the tissue of elaborate falsehoods which he built on the basis of truth were instrumental in damning the unfortunate primate. On 23 June 1681 Duffy and the other witnesses received a pardon for their part in the alleged plot, and they received £10 and a pass to return to Ireland on 27 August. However, the church avenged itself on Duffy and MacMoyer: on 11 August 1681 the Sacred College denounced them as apostates and excommunicated them. According to the testimony of Archbishop John Brenan (qv) of Cashel, Duffy soon found himself on the wrong side of the law. Incarcerated in consequence of his association with the tories and his accusations against the duke of Ormond (qv), he escaped from prison in May 1682 and joined the tories. However, conflicting evidence suggests that he was in residence in a convent in Saint-Jean du Lac in France. Duffy totally disappears from view until 1720, when, as an old, emaciated man seeking forgiveness for his despicable crime, he approached Archbishop Hugh MacMahon (qv) of Armagh. MacMahon produced the embalmed head of his predecessor from a glass case in which it had only recently been sent back to the archdiocese from Rome. Nevertheless the elderly penitent was finally received back into the church, and probably died shortly afterwards.