Renehan, Laurence F. (1797/8–1857), priest, bibliophile, and president of Maynooth College 1845–57, was born at Longford Pass, in the parish of Gurtnahoe, Co. Tipperary, second son of Laurence Renehan, farmer, and Catherine Renehan (née Borden). Destined for the church from an early age, he was educated at the school in Freshford before studying in Kilkenny, where he excelled in the classics. In September 1819 he entered St Patrick's College, Maynooth, where he initially studied logic. Elected as a student of the Dunboyne institute of the college in 1825, he was later elected a junior dean (September 1825), being ordained priest shortly afterwards.
In July 1827 he was appointed professor of scripture at Maynooth and began to play an increasingly important role in the running of the college. During the cholera outbreak of 1832 he served on the college's board of health, initiating a number of sanitary measures. In June 1834 he was appointed vice-president, later declining the offer of the parish of Cashel. During his time as vice-president he also acted (1841–3) as the college's bursar, imposing a strict economic programme in the hope of reducing the college's growing debts. He served as prefect of the Dunboyne Institute on two occasions. Because of the ill-health of the president, the Rev. Michael Montague, he was effectively acting president by 1845, and when Montague resigned (January 1845), Renehan was elected his successor.
His term as president of Maynooth coincided with a massive renovation of the college's buildings, which was carried out to the designs of A. W. N. Pugin (qv). These new buildings included a library and a president's lodgings, and Renehan was the first president of Maynooth to live there. This building scheme was made possible by a large increase in the government's annual endowment, which was secured in June 1845, and Renehan played a prominent part in these negotiations. In the late 1840s he tried to discourage seminarians from becoming involved in politics, especially in the debates between Young and Old Ireland. During the famine he again instituted sanitary measures in Maynooth and tried to administer relief to the population of the immediate area. In 1847 he became embroiled in a legal controversy when he wrote to Bishop Henry Pepys of Worcester, criticising the Rev. Denis Brasbie who had been ordained a catholic priest but had later become a clergyman in the Church of Ireland. Brasbie sued for libel, initially claiming £5,000 in damages. While the jury found against Renehan, they awarded Brasbie only £25 plus his legal costs. In the early 1850s Renehan opposed the proposals of John Henry Newman (qv) for a catholic university in Dublin, jealously guarding Maynooth's status and privileges.
His term as president also coincided with a decline in student discipline, exacerbated by the indifferent attitude of the board of trustees to student petitions. Of unkempt appearance and with a shock of red hair, Renehan was nicknamed ‘Raddle’ by seminarians, from the brand name of a type of red dye used to mark sheep. Inscribing the name ‘Raddle’ in red sheep-dye on the walls of college buildings, the seminarians took to jeering and whistling at him as he walked through the college. In the spring of 1857 he suffered a stroke and his health gradually declined. He died on the morning of 27 July 1857 in the president's lodgings and was buried in the college cemetery. A Gothic monument, designed by J. J. McCarthy (qv), was later raised over his grave.
Throughout his career in Maynooth he had spent the summer months travelling in Europe, visiting libraries and copying manuscripts that had a relevance to Irish history. Especially interested in the history of the Irish catholic church in the penal era, he scoured libraries in Rome, Paris, Brussels, and Louvain in search of material, acquiring a large collection of manuscripts and books. A prominent member of the Celtic Society and interested in sacred music, he published A choir manual of sacred music and A requiem office book. His energetic research and obsessive collecting never resulted in any great historical work during his lifetime. After his death, the Rev. Daniel McCarthy, professor of scripture at Maynooth and later bishop of Kerry, edited some of his papers and published A history of music (1858) and Collections on Irish church history from the manuscripts of the late Very Rev. Laurence F. Renehan, D.D., president of Maynooth College (2 vols, 1861, 1874). Richard Hackett edited and published Grammar of Gregorian and modern music (1865), which was also based on Renehan's notes. Under the terms of a complicated will his successor, the Rev. Dr Charles Russell (qv), was allowed to choose £200 worth of books and manuscripts from his collection for the college library. A very fine fifteenth-century Franciscan breviary was included in the material chosen by Russell. Renehan also left £100 for the renovation of the college cemetery and the erection of a memorial to all those interned there. In 1986 the college library was renovated and the new boardroom named ‘Renehan Hall’. The library of Maynooth College holds a large collection of his papers, as he was the first president of the college to keep comprehensive records.