James Thomas O'Brien

James Thomas O'Brien (1792–1874), was an Irish clergyman. He was Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin from 1842 to 1874.

O'Brien, born at New Ross, County Wexford, in September 1792, was the son of Michael Burke O'Brien, a corporation officer, with the title of deputy sovereign of New Ross, who died in 1826. His mother, Dorothy, was the daughter of Thomas Kough. The father, who came originally from County Clare, was descended, although himself a Protestant, from a Roman Catholic branch of the great O'Brien family, which had been deprived of its property by the penal laws; he was well educated, but more imprudent than provident.

The son was educated at the endowed school of New Ross, and entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a pensioner in November 1810. A portion of the cost of his education was defrayed by the borough of New Ross; in September 1826 he refunded the amount, £116, and was voted the freedom of the borough and a gold box. O'Brien obtained a scholarship at Trinity College in 1813, graduated B.A., and took the gold medal in 1815. He was especially distinguished in mathematics.

In 1820, O'Brien obtained a fellowship of Trinity, and took holy orders. He was awarded the degree of D.D. in 1830. He was one of the six University of Dublin preachers from 1828 till 1842, and became Archbishop King's lecturer in 1833, when the divinity school in the university was thoroughly reorganised.

O'Brien maintained through life strongly evangelical views. He was well read in the works of the reformers and their opponents, and in those of Bishop Butler and the Deists. In 1829 and 1830 his university sermons on the reformation doctrine of justification by faith became, when published in 1833, a standard work. As Archbishop King's lecturer, he lectured on ‘The Evidences of Religion, with a special reference to Sceptical and Infidel Attempts to invalidate them, and the Socinian controversy.’ Resigning his fellowship in 1836, he became vicar of Clonderhorka, Raphoe, but removed in 1837 to the vicarage of Arboe, Armagh, which he held till 1841. On 9 Nov. 1841 he was nominated Dean of Cork, and instituted on 5 Jan. 1842. On 9 March in the same year he was raised by the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel to the bishopric of the united dioceses of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin.

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