Oliver Plunkett

Oliver Plunkett (also spelt Oliver Plunket) (Irish: Oilibhéar Pluincéid), known as Saint Oliver Plunkett, (1 November 1625 – 1 July 1681) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland who was the last victim of the Popish Plot. He was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, thus becoming the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years.

Biography

Oliver Plunkett was born on the 1st of November 1625 (earlier biographers gave his date of birth as 1 November 1629, but 1625 has been the consensus since the 1930s) in Loughcrew, County Meath, Ireland, to well-to-do parents with Hiberno-Norman ancestors. He was related by birth to a number of landed families, such as the recently ennobled Earls of Roscommon, as well as the long-established Earls of Fingall, Lords Louth and Lords Dunsany. Until his sixteenth year, the boy's education was entrusted to his cousin Patrick Plunkett, Abbot of St Mary's, Dublin and brother of Luke Plunkett, the first Earl of Fingall, who later became successively Bishop of Ardagh and of Meath. As an aspirant to the priesthood he set out for Rome in 1647, under the care of Father Pierfrancesco Scarampi of the Roman Oratory. At this time the Irish Confederate Wars were raging in Ireland; these were essentially conflicts between native Irish Roman Catholics, English and Irish Anglicans and Protestants. Scarampi was the Papal envoy to the Roman Catholic movement known as the Confederation of Ireland. Many of Plunkett's relatives were involved in this organisation.

Oliver Plunkett (judge)

Oliver Plunkett (1884 - ?) was a British judge in Palestine and Egypt.

Oliver Plunkett was born in 1884 in Dublin, Ireland. He studied law, and in 1909 became a member of the Irish bar. In World War I he served in the British Army, in the frontiers of France and Flandria, and was wounded twice. After the war he joined the Colonial Service, and became the Governor-General of Saint Lucia.

In 1928, he became a judge in Palestine, and was president of the Tel Aviv District Court. He was one of the judges in the Assassination of Haim Arlosoroff trial.

During World War II, two of his sons were killed while serving in the British Army: Oliver Peter Plunkett, a pilot in the RAF killed in 1941, and lieutenant Gw Plunkett, of the light Anti-Aircraft Royal Artillery, killed in 1943.

On April 1945, Plunkett was appointed president of the Mixed Courts of Egypt.

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