INGE, HUGH

Archbishop of Dublin and chancellor of Ireland; b. Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England, date unknown; d. Dublin, Aug. 3, 1528. He appears in history first as a scholar in Winchester (1480), and he became a fellow of New College, Oxford (1484), after which he went to the Continent to take his degree. He served in the Diocese of Bath and Wells, and visited Rome with his bishop in 1504 on a mission for Henry VIII. His appointments include the prebendaries of Cudworth (1501) and of East Harptree (1503), succentor of Wells Cathedral (1503), and vicar of West Zoyland (1508) and of Doulting (1509). He also held benefices in the Dioceses of Worcester and Lincoln. Inge attracted Cardinal Thomas wolsey's attention as a possibly tractable agent, and through Wolsey's influence, without which he would have had "small comfort in this world," he became bishop of Meath (1512). In 1520 he gave the archdeaconry of Meath to the king's physician. Dissatisfied, he had appealed to Wolsey, asking that he not be cast aside, and he was rewarded with the chancellorship in 1522 and the See of Dublin in the same year. He pursued Wolsey's policy of hostility to Gerald, Earl of Kildare; he was credited with a reputation for justice and probity, and the rebuilding of St. Sepulchre's, the archbishop's residence. He died of the sweating sickness.

Bibliography: b. h. blacker, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 10:431–432 f. e. ball, The Judges in Ireland, 2 v. (London 1926) 1:194–195, passim. j. d'alton, The Memoirs of the Archbishops of Dublin (Dublin 1838) 182–184.

[j. j. meagher]