Marcus Gervais Beresford Doctor of Divinity, Data Control Language, Personal Computer 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.
Background
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.
Education
Educated at Doctor Tate"s school at Richmond and at Trinity College, Cambridge, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1824 then graduated Master of Arts in 1828 and Doctor of Divinity in 1840.
Career
Beresford belonged to a family "connected for generations with the highest dignity and power in the civil and ecclesiastical administration of Ireland"
He was later awarded the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws by Oxford in 1864. In 1824, Beresford was ordained deacon and in 1825 priest, and was quickly appointed Rector of Kildallon, County Cavan, a parish in his father"s diocese of Kilmore. Three years later, he was preferred to the vicarages of Drung and Larah in the same diocese, benefices which he held until 1839 when he became archdeacon of Ardagh when Ardagh was united with Kilmore.
His father was succeeded by Bishop Leslie, but on Leslie"s death in 1854 Beresford followed in his father"s footsteps as bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh and was consecrated in Armagh Cathedral on 24 September 1854.
As Archbishop, Beresford was appointed to the Privy Council of Ireland and also sometimes acted as a lord justice for the government of Ireland in the absence of the Viceroy. Beresford died at Armagh on 26 December 1885 and was entombed there in Street Patrick"s Cathedral.
On 25 October 1824 Beresford married Mary, a daughter of Henry L"Estrange of Moystown and the widow of R. East. Digby of Geashill.