Charles William Russell

Russell refused the Bishopric of Down and the Archbishopric of Armagh, choices that suggest a mind more at home with ideas than hierarchies. He spent decades editing manuscripts, writing encyclopaedia entries and shaping Maynooth into a place where learning could be lived rather than performed. Even his death, delayed by an old riding fall, has the flavour of a life spent in motion. Killough gave him birth, but Maynooth and Dublin gave his refusal a shape.