Marcus Beresford

Marcus Gervais Beresford (14 February 1801 – 26 December 1885) was the Church of Ireland Bishop of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh from 1854 to 1862 and Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1862 until his death.

Early life Beresford was born in 1801 at the Custom House, Dublin, then the town house of his grandfather, John Beresford, a unionist Member of Parliament, and was a great-grandson of Marcus Beresford, 1st Earl of Tyrone. He was the second son of George Beresford, Bishop of Kilmore and later of Kilmore and Ardagh, and of his wife Frances, a daughter of Gervase Parker Bushe and a niece of Henry Grattan. Beresford belonged to a family "connected for generations with the highest dignity and power in the civil and ecclesiastical administration of Ireland”.

Educated at Richmond School under Dr Tate and at Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated BA in 1824, MA in 1828 and DD in 1840. He was later awarded the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws by Oxford in 1864.

Wives and children On 25 October 1824 Beresford married Mary, a daughter of Henry L'Estrange of Moystown and the widow of R. E. Digby of Geashill. They had two sons and three daughters: Charlotte Henrietta Beresford (died 1884), Mary Emily Beresford (died 1858), George De la Poer Beresford (1831–1906) and Major Henry Marcus Beresford (1835–1895).