memorial on Carleton's behalf signed by numbers of distinguished persons in Ireland. He died at his home (now demolished) at Woodville, Sandford Road, in (Cullenswood) Ranelagh, Dublin, and is interred at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross, Dublin. The house was close to the entrance to the Jesuit residence at Milltown Park. Despite his conversion to Protestantism, Carleton remained on friendly terms with one of the priests there, Reverend Robert Carbery SJ, who offered to give him the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. Carleton, in the final weeks before his death in January 1869, politely declined the offer, stating he had not been a Roman Catholic "for half a century & more". Controversial reputation Carleton alienated the sympathies of many Catholic Irishmen by his accusations of gang violence, sectarian violence, and alcoholism among the Irish tenant class. He was in his own words the "historian of their habits and manners, their feelings, their prejudices, their superstitions and their crimes" (Preface to Tales of Ireland). Some of his later stories, The Squanders of Castle Squander (1852) for instance, are spoiled by the mass of political matter in them. Anti-Catholicism Another factor that alienated Carleton from his fellow Irishmen was his intense hatred of the Catholic Church in Ireland to which the majority of his countrymen belonged. It has been argued (for example by Brian Donnelly) that Carleton's conversion to Anglicanism may have been a pragmatic move, as it would have been difficult for an aspiring young Catholic author to receive the patronage necessary to achieve success in early 19th-century Ireland. However, Donnelly's arguments fail when compared to Carleton's own statements in an 1826 letter to the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel. Carleton urged Peel to violently suppress Daniel O'Connell's activism for Catholic Emancipation, and claimed to have proof of O'Connell's involvement in fomenting anti-Protestant and anti-Landlord violence, while also accusing every Roman Catholic priest and schoolmaster of the same crimes. Shortly afterwards, Carleton befriended a Church of Ireland minister named Caesar Otway. According to W. B. Yeats, Reverend Otway was an, "anti-papal controversialist," who encouraged Carleton to write stories to "highlight...the corrupt practices of an ignorant clergy." Frank O'Connor expressed a belief that Carleton debased his talents by taking sides in Ireland's religious divide. O'Connor admits, however, that Carleton could not win either way. In Victorian era Ireland, Protestant readers were demanding stories which unconditionally demonised Catholicism and its adherents, while