Coppinger, William (1753–1831), catholic bishop of Cloyne and Ross, was born 20 May 1753 in St Finbar's parish, Co. Cork, son of Stephen William Coppinger and Joanna Coppinger, a cousin. He was educated in France, where he briefly considered a military career and even applied for a commission in the French army. Changing his mind, he enrolled in the Irish college in Paris and was ordained a priest (1780). Returning to Ireland, he served as curate in his home parish before becoming parish priest at Carrigaline, and later Passage West, Co. Cork. Under the patronage of Bishop Francis Moylan (qv), bishop of Cork, he was appointed vicar general of Cork (1786), and subsequently coadjutor to Bishop Matthew MacKenna (1706–91) of the diocese of Cloyne and Ross (9 December 1787). MacKenna, however, had not been consulted about the appointment. He did not warm to Coppinger, and over the next three years lodged many official complaints against him. Matters did not improve significantly when Coppinger succeeded MacKenna (4 June 1791); the catholic gentry remained suspicious of him.
A trustee of Maynooth College, he was sharply critical of the student riots in 1797 and 1802–3, and feared their spread. In 1798, suspecting that the government was attempting to provoke the people, he produced a social pastoral against rebellion, arguing that the poor would remain poor no matter what type of government was in power. During the rebellion he fled Youghal and went to Midleton, where he lived until 1812; he subsequently resided at Cobh. Nevertheless, he was regarded with suspicion by the government for many years after the rebellion, especially after his unwillingness to support the act of union (1800): he insisted he was ‘little in the habit of bowing at the Castle’.
In the 1800s he was a steady critic of the government and was partly responsible for a letter (5 July 1805) from the Roman Catholic hierarchy to the prime minister, Lord Grenville (qv), petitioning about tithes. Vehemently opposed to the veto, he saw it as an attempt by the British cabinet to ruin the catholic church in Ireland by bringing in ‘bad bishops’ and ‘their drunken infidel, their cringing tale-bearing sycophant’ (Bartlett, 299). His resolutions against the veto were adopted at the synod of 1808 by twenty-three prelates to three. Coppinger was critical of Archbishop Troy (qv) of Dublin for supporting the veto-pension scheme, and in his pamphlet Royal veto (1809) he also criticised the pro-veto English bishop John Milner (1752–1826), who acted as agent for the Irish bishops in London and Rome.
In 1816, when John Murphy (qv), bishop of Cork, sought to unite Ross with his diocese, Coppinger sent a map of the county to Rome to counter Murphy's arguments. He declined to become patron and protector of the regular clergy, apparently fearing that he was not up to such an undertaking. In July 1826 he made an impassioned plea for the forty-shilling freeholders who were facing financial persecution, arguing that their fellow catholics should assist them.
Coppinger was a distinguished pamphleteer, author, and translator. His translation of the ‘Imitation of Christ’ (1795) was well received, as was his short Life of Nano Nagle (1794). Other significant works include Monita pastoralia (1821), the revised statutes for the dioceses of Cloyne and Ross, and his catechism, which was published before 1819.
He died 9 August 1831 and was buried in Cobh cathedral, Co. Cork. He was succeeded as bishop of Cloyne and Ross by his coadjutor, Michael Collins (1781–1832).