Born: 1585, County Galway
Entered: Montilla, Spain (BAE)
Left Society of Jesus: 21 February 1609
◆ Francis Finegan SJ Biographical Dictionary 1598-1773
He was son of Thomas and Letitia Lynch and was born at Galway, 1585, and studied Humanities for four years in that city under Irish and English masters. Having finished his schooling, he spent a year in business, but then entered the Irish College of Salamanca on July 25, 1602. He was received into the Society in the Province of Andalusia c May, 1605, and made his noviceship at Montilla.
Sometime after his Noviceship, epilepsy manifested itself and he was sent to Belgium, but his sickness did not abate. In the circumstances, he could not be ordained Priest. The General, in a letter of February 21, 1609, allowing him to leave the Society, praised him for his good-will and constancy and the good example he radiated during his short association with the Society.
◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online
Lynch, Alexander
by Judy Barry
Lynch, Alexander (c.1585–p. 1620), schoolmaster, was son of Thomas and Letitia Lynch. As a boy he was educated in Galway, reading humanities for four years under English and Irish teachers. In 1602 he left Galway for the Irish Jesuit college in Salamanca, where he was admitted on 25 July to study for the priesthood; he completed two years of philosophy and was considered a promising student. In about May 1605 he was received into the Society of Jesus and made his noviciate at Montilla in Andalusia where he was found to be suffering from epilepsy (morbo comitiali). He was sent by his superior to the Spanish Netherlands in the hope that the change would be good for him. He did not improve, and on 21 February 1609 the superior general released him from his obligations as a Jesuit.
Lynch returned to Galway where his home became a safe house for Jesuit missionaries passing through the area. He began teaching a wide range of subjects in the free school founded in 1580 by Dominick Lynch at a place called Ceann-a-bhalla (head of the [town] wall), near the Spanish Arch in the southern district of Galway city. He was assisted by one James Lynch, who was awarded a pension in 1638 for his work in ‘training and breeding’ the pupils ‘for the space of thirty years and upwards in good literature and sciences’ (O'Sullivan, Old Galway, 462). Under Alexander Lynch's influence the school rapidly acquired a reputation for scholarship and attracted students from all over Ireland, including the Pale. Many of these scholars became distinguished men in public life, while others were prepared for entry into one of the continental seminaries.
In about 1620 Galway was visited by an official commission which included the chancellor of Ireland, Archbishop Thomas Jones (qv), and the archbishop of Tuam, William Daniel (qv). The commissioners reported that they had found a public schoolmaster named Lynch ‘placed there by the citizens’ and were impressed by the standard of his students, who were well taught in ‘verses and orations’, a judgement confirmed by John Lynch (qv), a former pupil, in De praesulibus Hiberniae. The method of teaching described by both Archbishop Jones and Dr Lynch accords closely with the method used in Jesuit schools at the time.
Archbishop Jones, although praising the school, insisted that if Lynch did not conform to the established religion he should not be allowed to continue to teach. Lynch refused to conform and was required to enter into recognizances of £400 sterling, which was paid partly by himself and partly by his friends and supporters in Galway. Lynch was replaced by a Mr Lally and no further record of him has survived.
Timothy Corcoran, State policy in Irish education 1536–1816 (1916), 65; M. D. O'Sullivan, ‘The lay school at Galway in the sixteenth century’, Galway Arch. Soc. Jn., xv (1931), 16–18; idem, Old Galway (1942); J. Rabbitte, SJ, ‘Alexander Lynch, schoolmaster’, Galway Arch. Soc. Jn., xvii (1936), 34–42; John Lynch, De praesulibus Hiberniae, ed. J. F. O'Doherty (2 vols, 1944), ii, 184
