Cavanagh (Kavanagh), Patrick (d. 1581), catholic martyr, was a sailor in the port of Wexford. In 1581 Viscount Baltinglass (qv), then in rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I, and his Jesuit chaplain Robert Rochford attempted to find passage to the Continent with the aid of some sailors, one of whom was Cavanagh. Arrested for this action along with Edward Cheevers (qv) and four others, he was found guilty of treason and was hanged, drawn, and quartered in July 1581. A Wexford Jesuit, John Howlin (qv), wrote what appears to be an eye-witness account of their execution. On 27 September 1992 Cavanagh was one of seventeen Irish martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II in Rome.
Sources
P. F. Moran, Spicilegum ossoriense (1874), i, 103–4; Kevin Whelan (ed.), Wexford, history and society (1987), 224; Desmond Forristal, Seventeen martyrs (1990), 17–19; Ir. Times, 26 Sept. 1992; Patrick J. Corish, ‘The beatified martyrs of Ireland, 2: Matthew Lambert, Robert Meyler, Edward Cheevers, Patrick Cavanagh and companions’, Irish Theological Quarterly, lxiv (1999), 179–87