Ram

Bishop Ram, was the son of Francis Ram of Windsor, whose ancestors originally came from Hanover in Germany and in particular from a small mining town called Ramelsberg – hence the name Ram. The family seem to have come to England in the Middle Ages as a military family and John Ram of Halston, Kent was a baronet. He was the great great grandfather of Bishop Thomas Ram.

Thomas was born in 1564, at Windsor and was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge. He went to Ireland as chaplain to the ill-fated Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, who was subsequently executed by Queen Elizabeth. In 1600 Thomas was appointed Dean of Cork and later Dean of Ferns. He was later chaplain to Devereux’s successor Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, by whose patronage he became Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, at the young age of forty in 1605.

In 1620 the Bishop moved his see from Ferns to the new plantation town of Gorey where he completed his bishop’s palace by 1630.

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