15 Facts About John Bramhall

John Bramhall, DD was an Archbishop of Armagh, and an Anglican theologian and apologist.

John Bramhall was a noted controversialist who doggedly defended the English Church from both Puritan and Roman Catholic accusations, as well as the materialism of Thomas Hobbes.

John Bramhall was ordained around 1616, and was presented with a Yorkshire living, South Kilvington, by Christopher Wandesford.

John Bramhall went to Ireland in 1633 with Thomas Wentworth and was archdeacon of Meath.

John Bramhall employed the proceeds of his English property in purchasing and improving an estate at Omagh, County Tyrone, in a Catholic area.

John Bramhall left Derry for Dublin, and took his place in the Irish House of Lords.

John Bramhall was imprisoned and accused of unconstitutional acts; his defence was that he had equitably sought the good of the church, and that his hands were clean.

John Bramhall then went back to Ireland, but not to Ulster, in 1648; at Limerick he received in 1649 the profession of the dying James Dillon, 3rd Earl of Roscommon.

John Bramhall corresponded with Montrose, and disputed and wrote in defence of the Church of England.

John Bramhall was excluded from the Act of Indemnity of 1652; subsequently, he occasionally adopted in correspondence the pseudonym 'John Pierson'.

John Bramhall was defending his rights in a court of law at Omagh against Sir Audley Mervyn when a third paralytic stroke deprived him of consciousness.

John Bramhall followed this with his 1649 Fair Warning against the Scottish Discipline, which was an attack on the weaknesses of the presbyterian model and an excoriation of the Puritan religious claims.

Additionally, John Bramhall attempted to defend the English Church from attacks from the Roman Catholic Church.

John Bramhall's works were collected by John Vesey, Dublin, 1677.

John Bramhall is remembered for the phrase It is the last feather that breaks the horse's back, an early version of The last straw that breaks the camel's back.