Oscar Wilde’s words in a letter to ‘Bosie’ were written 300 years after the subject of this chapter, Bishop John Atherton, was in serious trouble for alleged sodomy. But the words in Wilde’s letter could easily apply. One man brought down the Bishop, starting with one accusation of serious misconduct and then the house of cards, that was the Bishop’s life, came down.
But our story begins with a ghost story, told at great length recently by Peter Marshall, who has researched Atherton’s story in depth. When Susan Leakey of Minehead died, she supposedly returned in spirit to disturb all kinds of good Somerset people. Her son-in-law, John Atherton, was to feel the after-shocks of that when he progressed in his church career. He married Susan’s daughter, started out as vicar of the village of Huish Champflower, and then became Bishop of Waterford and Lismore from 1636 to his death in 1640.
It is a long and complex tale, but it ended in Dublin with the Bishop at the end of a rope. In the first part of the tale, when Susan ‘Mother’ Leakey began to appear in apparition and the society around Minehead was stirred up. At a time when such things were more often linked to demonic than to Christian notions by Protestants, it was a phenomenon that attracted interest in the higher echelons of the church. Catholics would have had no problem as they believe in purgatory of course. But in the seventeenth century when witchcraft was a dark art in need of severe punishment in the eyes of many, Minehead and its doings were seen by some powerful people as possibly the centre of some evil doings.