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One curious postscript to the Mannix farewell to Maynooth has never been explained. Just two days before being consecrated as archbishop, near the end of his nine-day retreat of prayer and silence, he wrote a short note inviting an underqualified, obscure young teacher, whom he had never met, to apply for a part-time job lecturing in mathematics at Maynooth.45 Mannix could have left it to his successor to find a candidate for this minor post. Why did he want to help Eamon de Valera? In 1912, de Valera, a father of three, was struggling to get by with bits and pieces of teaching in secondary schools. The Maynooth connection would be an immense asset to a future political leader, but in 1912 de Valera hadn’t entered politics. All he had done was to get a disappointing pass degree in mathematics, learn Irish, and become secretary of a branch of the Gaelic League. Was Mannix trying to atone for the O’Hickey case? Whatever his reasons, he brought the future Sinn Féin leader, like a Trojan horse, into the clerical fortress of Maynooth.
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