Ireland under the Tudors. Volume 3 (of 3)

In Sir William Fitzwilliam’s time there was not one serviceable church from Dublin to the farthest end of Munster, except in the port towns. And the plain-spoken English lawyer, Andrew Trollope, has furnished many details. Out of thirty bishops not seven were able to preach, and the practice of alienating property was so rife that all the sees in Ireland would not be able to support one man worthy of his calling. The common secular clergy were mere stipendiaries, few having 5l. a year, and the majority not more than half that sum. ‘In truth,’ Trollope adds, ‘such they are as deserve not living or to live. For they will not be accounted ministers but priests. They will have no wives. If they would stay there it were well; but they will have harlots which they make believe that it is no sin to live and lie with them, and bear them children. But if they marry them they are damned. And with long experience and some extraordinary trial of these fellows, I cannot find whether the most of them love lewd women, cards, dice, or drink best. And when they must of necessity go to church, they carry with them a book in Latin of the Common Prayer set forth and allowed by her Majesty. But they read little or nothing of it or can well read it, but they tell the people a tale of Our Lady or St. Patrick, or some other saint, horrible to be spoken or heard, and intolerable to be suffered, and do all they may to allure the people from God and their prince, and their due obedience to them both, and persuade them to the Devil and the Pope. And sure the people so much hear them, believe them, and are led by them, and have so little instruction to the contrary, as here is in effect a general revolt from God and true religion, our prince, and her Highness’s laws.’[436 - Considerations touching Munster, 1587, No. 70; Andrew Trollope to Walsingham, Oct. 26, 1587. Sir William Russell is said to have advised liberal grants of church lands to the nobility of both persuasions, ‘who would then hold their religion with their lands, in capite.’]

Spenser on the Church, 1596

Zeal of the Roman party

‘Whatever disorders,’ says Spenser, ‘you see in the Church of England, ye may find in Ireland, and many more: namely gross simony, greedy covetousness, fleshly incontinency, careless sloth, and generally all disordered life in the common clergymen.’ Priests of Irish blood behaved like laymen, neither reading, preaching, nor celebrating the Communion, and ‘christening after the Popish fashion.’ They were diligent only in collecting tithes and dues. When the bishops were Irishmen their government was lax, and very often corrupt. English candidates for livings they rejected whenever they could, and a reason was generally available, since such aspirants were mostly either unlearned, or ‘men of some bad note, for which they have forsaken England.’ In the wilder districts the livings were so miserable that an English minister could scarcely support himself, and so dangerous that no man of peace could venture to reside. Where the benefices were somewhat fat, the incumbents, ‘having the livings of the country offered unto them without pains and without peril, will neither for the same, nor any love of God, nor zeal of religion, nor for all the good they may do by winning souls to God, be drawn forth from their warm nests, to look out into God’s harvest, which is ever ready for the sickle, and all the fields yellow long ago.’ And in the meantime Jesuits and friars came continually from France, Italy, and Spain, ‘by long toil and dangerous travailing thither where they know peril of death awaiteth them, and no reward or riches is to be found, only to draw the people unto the Church of Rome.’ Most of the churches were utterly ruined, and some were ‘so unhandsomely patched and thatched’ as to repel worshippers by their mere ugliness. Carelessness and stinginess were to blame, but the mischief was unwittingly increased by the Puritans, ‘our late too nice fools, who say there is nothing in the seemly form and comely order of the Church.’ Spenser proposed that there should be a strict law strictly enforced against sending young men to Rheims, Douai, Louvain, and such places, ‘whose private persuasions do more hurt than the clergy can do good with their public instructions.’ English ministers, neat churches with proper churchwardens, and efficient schools, might follow. But he was not sanguine, ‘for what good should any English minister do among them by teaching or preaching to them which either cannot understand him or will not hear him.’[437 - Spenser’s View of the State of Ireland, 1596. Some of the poet’s words might suggest Swift’s savage outburst about the worthy divines appointed to Irish sees who were uniformly robbed and murdered on Hounslow Heath ‘by the highwaymen frequenting that common, who seize upon their robes and patents, come over to Ireland, and are consecrated bishops in their stead.’]

Ireland devoted to Rome

Jesuit schools

The energy of the Jesuits and friars in Ireland was one sign of a revival in the Church of Rome; no longer the Church of the Borgias or even of the Medici, but of Loyola and Contarini, of St. Carlo Borromeo and St. Vincent de Paul. Fasts were more strictly observed, and it became more and more difficult to secure even occasional and outward conformity to the State Church. In the early years of the Queen’s reign the inhabitants of the towns generally attended service, but the women wearied and were not punished. When the Tyrone war began, even mayors, portreeves, and other local officials had given up their attendance, and most of the children were christened in private houses. The Jesuits had schools in nearly all the towns, and young men resorted in great numbers to foreign seminaries. Priests and friars swarmed everywhere, especially at Waterford, and were sheltered by householders, under whose roofs they sometimes preached quite openly. And the steady influence of these priests was directed to making Ireland dependent on foreign aid. Cornelius Ryan, papal bishop of Killaloe, advised O’Rourke to get some learned Irishman to write to the Pope, begging him to separate Ireland from England for ever and to make Tyrone king. The Jesuit Dominic O’Colan confessed that the designs of Rome and Spain extended even further than this, Philip intending with his army ‘to overrun Ireland, and to make that realm his ladder or bridge into England.’ The questions of religious belief and of civil allegiance are inextricably connected at this period, and it is impossible for us, as it was for Elizabeth, to treat them as really separate.[438 - Cornelius, bishop of Killaloe, to O’Rourke, Feb. 13, 1596; Sir John Dowdall to Cecil, March 9, 1596; Memorial among the Rawlinson MSS. July 28, 1592, printed in Irish Arch. Journal, i. 80; Dominic O’Colan’s confession, July 9, 1602.]

Waterford Bishop Middleton

A model dean

Waterford was by all accounts the greatest resort of priests and friars. Miler Magrath was too busy jobbing to take much notice, and he held the see from 1582 to 1589, and again from 1592 to 1608. But Marmaduke Middleton, who was bishop of Waterford from 1579 to 1582, took his trust seriously, and found life uncomfortable in proportion. The marriage ceremony was scarcely thought necessary. Beads were publicly used, and prayers offered for the dead; nor did Middleton dare, for fear of a tumult, to remove images from the churches. ‘There is,’ he says, ‘no difference between the clergy and the laity here, for they have joined together to prevent her Majesty’s most godly proceedings – both by defacing of the see, which is not annually, at this instant, worth 30l. a year, and all the spiritual living in temporal men’s hands so surely linked that they cannot be redeemed. And the most of the incumbents are little better than wood-kerne.’ Middleton’s life was thought to be in danger, and he was translated to St. David’s. He succeeded in preventing the succession from falling to the dean, David Clere, who had thwarted him in every way, and whom Pelham wished to deprive even of that which he had. The deanery, however, remained with Clere, ‘who was well friended, as none better in this world than the wicked,’ and Magrath had his help in despoiling the church of Waterford.[439 - Pelham to Walsingham, Dec. 7, 1579; Bishop Middleton to Walsingham, June 29, July 21, and Aug. 19, 1580. ‘They call their city young Rochelle; I pray God it be not ironice dictum.’ And see John Shearman, schoolmaster of Waterford, to Primate Long, July 12, 1585.]

Cork, Cloyne, and Ross, Bishop Lyon

Position of Protestants

The united diocese of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross fared, according to Bramhall, ‘the best of any bishopric in that province; a very good man, Bishop Lyon, being placed there early in the Reformation.’ In 1595 he had had thirteen years’ experience, and he gave a most lamentable account of his stewardship. There was, he said, no knowledge of God’s truth and no obedience to magistrates, but false teachers drew men away ‘to the palpable and damnable blindness to obey her Majesty’s capital and mortal enemy, that Anti-christ of Rome.’ Priests swore men to the Pope, charging a fee of one shilling and sixpence for every mass afterwards. The same priests baptized the children quietly, and it was scarcely possible to get sponsors for a legal christening; one poor clerk, his wife, and a poor minister, acting as universal ‘gossips.’ Recusants had special orders not to argue with any Protestant. Lyon says that at one time he would have a congregation of a thousand when he preached, but that now he had not five, while communicants had dwindled from 500 to three. The country was full of friars, who were in all things obedient to Bishop Gallagher, the legate, while there was not a Protestant in the province who could preach in Irish. The ‘devil’s service’ was the best of the many names popularly applied to the Anglican ritual, and the natives crossed themselves when Protestants passed, as if they were indeed devils. Lyon built himself a house at Ross, which was burned down by the O’Donovans; but he did what he could. Churches were restored, Bibles and Prayer Books were provided in English and Latin; but the congregations would not be tempted. Oaths to the Pope were freely taken, binding men to disobey the Act of Uniformity, and other oaths could not be believed. Owen MacEgan, who was sometimes called Bishop of Ross, had the power of a vicar apostolic, and confirmed children in crowds. ‘These wicked priests,’ says Lyon, ‘are the sowers of rebellion in this kingdom, and will do mischief if they be not looked unto in time… I have lived here twenty-five years, and been bishop fifteen years, and I have observed their doings. I never saw them so badly minded as they be now in general, for it is a general revolt throughout the whole kingdom… they have had the reins of liberty let loose unto them, and have not been kept under, whereas they are a people which, feeling the rigour of justice, are a good people in their kind, and with due justice and correction (but not oppressed, extorted, and unjustly dealt withal) they will be dutiful and obedient. But let them have favour and be well entreated, they will wax proud, stubborn, disobedient, disloyal, and rebellious. This I know by experience. Also the priests of the country have forsaken their benefices to become massing priests, because they are so well entreated and made so much of among the people. Many have forsaken their benefices by the persuasion of those seminaries that come from beyond the seas; they have a new mischief in hand if it be not prevented.’[440 - Bishop Lyon to Burghley, Sept. 23, 1595. The State Papers contain evidence that this was an energetic and liberal bishop: he built a church at Ross with 150l. of his own money, also a free school and a bridge.]

Papal emissaries

Owen MacEgan

Owen MacEgan, who was killed near Kinsale in 1602, was generally called Vicar Apostolic, and sometimes Bishop of Ross. He was believed by Carew to have all the patronage of Munster. He had great influence in Spain, but in Munster, John Creagh, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, was really a much more important person. He did not appear in public places where Englishmen were present, but exercised ‘all manner of spiritual jurisdictions in the whole province, being the Pope’s legate, consecrating churches, making priests, confirming children, deciding matrimony causes… one of the most dangerous fellows that ever came to that land, continued longest there of any of his sort, and has done more harm in two years than Dr. Sanders did in his time, who could procure the coming of the Spaniards only, but this Creagh draweth the whole country in general to disloyalty and breaking of the laws.’

Bishop Creagh

Creagh or MacGrath, for the name is written both ways, was the Archbishop of Cashel’s cousin; and Miler took care to warn him of any danger, while pretending to give information to the Government. In November, 1600, he was with the Sugane Earl, and actually fell into the hands of Carew’s soldiers, but they did not recognise him, ‘being clothed in a simple mantle and torn trousers like an aged churl.’ He lived on into the next reign, and exercised a very wide jurisdiction, Lord Cahir and Lord Mountgarret being much under his influence.[441 - Rawlinson MS. July 28, 1592, printed in Irish Arch. Journal, i. 80. Pacata Hibernica, book i. chap. xviii. Letter from Lord Cahir to Creagh, MS. Hatfield; Brady’s Episcopal Succession.]

The Pope’s acting primate. Redmond O’Gallagher

Bishop O’Devany

Of nearly equal importance with Creagh was Redmond O’Gallagher, the titular Bishop of Derry, who befriended Captain Cuellar, when he was cast away. O’Gallagher was one of the three Irish bishops who attended the Council of Trent. He had faculty to exercise jurisdiction in the whole province of Armagh during the frequent absences of Archbishop Creagh, and perhaps of his successor, MacGauran, and was busy ‘throughout all Ulster, consecrating churches, ordaining priests, confirming children, and giving all manner of dispensations, riding with pomp and company from place to place as it was accustomed in Queen Mary’s days.’ He was killed in a skirmish or foray in 1601. Cornelius O’Devany, titular bishop of Down and Connor, is revered in Ireland as a martyr, but his death did not take place till 1612, when he had been thirty years bishop. It was reported in 1592 that ‘Ulster contained nineteen monasteries, in which the friars and monks remained, using their habit and service as in Rome itself.’[442 - Rawlinson MS. ut sup.; Brady’s Episcopal Succession; Four Masters, 1601. In July 1588 O’Gallagher, as ‘Vice-Primas,’ delegates his authority to O’Devany for one year: ‘quoniam propter imminentia pericula ac discrimina interitus vitæ, personaliter terras illas visitare nequimus.’ See Fitzwilliam to Burghley, Oct. 26, 1588.]

Protestant primates

Lancaster

Primate Long

Primate Garvey

Primate Henry Ussher

From the translation of Loftus in 1567 to the end of the reign, there were four legal primates. The Cathedral of Armagh had been wrecked by Shane O’Neill, and the ruins of the city could scarcely be held even by a garrison, so that the archbishops generally lived at Termonfeckin. Primate Lancaster was anxious to found a grammar-school in the neighbouring town of Drogheda, and offered to leave ‘out of my transitory trifles 600l. for the performance of the same;’ but he seems to have died without carrying out this design, and his successor, Dr. Long, is better remembered for having wasted the property of his see than for any benefit to it. But Long was not a pluralist like his predecessor, and it may be urged in extenuation that he died 1,000l. in debt. He was succeeded by John Garvey, a Kilkenny man with an Oxford degree, who spoke Irish and who had earned a good name as Bishop of Kilmore. Garvey complained that Long had reduced the value of the see to 120l. a year by granting leases for ninety-nine years, that his houses at Termonfeckin and Drogheda were in ruins, and that three years’ income would scarcely suffice to put a roof over his head. Garvey died in 1595, and his successor, Henry Ussher, is most famous as one of the founders of Trinity College. The restoration of the cathedral and the provision of a residence at Armagh were reserved for Primate Hampton.[443 - Archbishop Lancaster to Walsingham, April 26, 1581; Sir N. White to Burghley, Feb. 3, 1589; Archbishop Garvey to Burghley, Feb. 20, 1592; Ware’s Bishops.]

Primate Long’s account of the Church, 1585

Primate Long has left a lamentable account of the Church in Perrott’s time, while giving that Deputy full credit for doing his best. ‘But why,’ he says, ‘should I name it a Church? whereas there is scant a show of any congregation of the godly, either care of material or mystical temple, in which men are brought to that pass, as taking away their shape, they are worse than horse and mule that have no understanding… becometh your honour to remember that subjects have souls as well as bodies, and how grievous it is to the Spirit of God to have them governed in body and neglected in soul… Oh, that your careful eyes did behold the abominations which, like impudent dogs, they are not ashamed before the King of Kings to commit, the smell whereof so annoyeth the heavens that I fear the Lord sitting there laugheth our counsel to scorn, which savours so much of our own wits without the true fear of him which is the beginning of wisdom… the clergy are like the people; nay, they have made the people like them monstrum horrendum informe ingens cui lumen ademptum. Your godly Parliament in England hath somewhat, though not sufficiently, bridled the court of faculties, the corruption of the clergy; but in this poor island it sendeth old and young, clergy and laity, in a wild gallop to the devil… Many souls daily perish whose cure are committed to boys and to open wolves… Is it possible to look for civil peace where there is no peace in conscience? Pitiful it is, and will be answered before the Highest, to suffer his garden to waste wild for lack of trimming, and then to pull up his plants, that might fructify, by the root, by palpable ignorance to make traitors, and then by sword and law to shed their blood, who for lack of better teaching could never do better.’ A few months later Long had the satisfaction of announcing that Owen O’Hart, Bishop of Achonry by papal provision, and one of those who had attended the Council of Trent, had resigned his see, ‘prostrating himself before her Majesty whom he beforehand had agreed to curse, and thoroughly persuaded that the man of sin sitteth in Rome under pretence of the seat of God.’ But O’Hart continued to act as bishop, paying hush money to his ostensible Protestant successor, and forming one of the seven who in 1587 promulgated the Tridentine decrees throughout Ulster. ‘It is a hard thing,’ says Long, ‘to be thought of, that the land is not able to afford of the birth of the land forty Christians which have the taste of the true service of God; and how then can they be true-hearted to her Majesty when they are severed from her.’ Lurking papists were bolder than they had been, and threatened the State; and it would be ‘too late to shut the stable door when the horse is stolen.’ Long is sometimes edifying and always forcible, but Ussher accused him of alienating the see-lands, and of making a seal which enabled him to do so without capitular consent.[444 - Archbishop Long to Burghley, Jan. 20, 1585, and June 10; to Walsingham, July 8; Archbishop Henry Ussher to Burghley, April 10, 1596.]

Archbishop Miler Magrath

How Magrath tended his sheep

Cashel

Waterford and Lismore

In the curious epitaph which he wrote for himself, Miler Magrath declares that he served England in the midst of war for fifty years. He was born in Fermanagh, became a conventual Franciscan, and was first provided to the See of Down, of which the O’Neills withheld the temporalities, and from which he was ejected by Gregory XIII. ‘for heresy and many other crimes.’ One of these was probably matrimony; at all events he was twice married, and had a large family of sons and daughters. Whether or not his conversion was sincere – and both opinions have been held – Magrath was no credit either to the Church which he joined or to the Church which he deserted and was accused of secretly favouring. He indulged immoderately in whisky, and he jobbed without the smallest compunction. In 1607, when he had been Archbishop of Cashel and Bishop of Emly for thirty-six years, the united diocese was found to be in a terrible state. Emly Cathedral was in ruins, and things were little better at Cashel. About twenty-six livings were held by his sons or other near relations, often in virtue of simoniacal contracts, and in nearly every case there was no provision for divine service. More than twenty livings and dignities were in the Archbishop’s own possession, who received the profits ‘without order taken for the service of the Church.’ No school whatever was provided. Nineteen livings or dignities were returned as void and destitute of incumbents, and in others,’ says the report, ‘some poor men, priests and others, carry the name, but they have little learning or sufficiency, and indeed are fitter to keep hogs than to serve in the church… in the two dioceses there is not one preacher or good minister to teach the subjects their duties to God and His Majesty.’ Magrath had been Bishop of Waterford and Lismore for twenty years, and ‘it will appear that wheresoever the Archbishop could do hurt to the Church he hath not forborne to do it. Sixteen livings were returned as void and destitute of incumbents.’ Several others were bestowed upon absentees, who provided no curates, and the Archbishop’s daughter or daughter-in-law enjoyed the income of two in which the churches were ruined and the cures not served. Magrath made many leases for his own profit, and, with the connivance of the Dean and Chapter, alienated the manor and see-lands of Lismore, and the castle, which was the episcopal residence, to Sir Walter Raleigh for a rent of 13l. 6s. 8d. in perpetuity. The capitular seal of Cashel he kept in his own hands and used as he pleased.[445 - Ware’s Bishops; Cotton’s Fasti; Archbishop Jones to Salisbury, Aug. 3, 1607; Note of abuses, &c. in Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore, in the Chancellor Archbishop of Dublin’s hand, and signed by him, Aug. 4, 1607. Writing to Cecil Feb. 20, 1604, Sir John Davies says Magrath held seventy-seven spiritual livings besides his four bishoprics.]

The country clergy

‘The country clergy,’ says Davies, ‘were idols and ciphers, and,’ he adds with a fine irony, ‘that they cannot read, if they should stand in need of the benefit of their clergy.’ Serving-men and horseboys held benefices, and the court of faculties dispensed them from all duty. And for all their pluralities they were beggars, since the patron or ordinary took most of the profits by ‘a plain contract before their institution.’

‘The agent or nuncio of the Pope,’ he says, ‘hath 40l. or 50l. a year out of the profits of a parsonage within the Pale.’ The churches were in ruins throughout the kingdom, and there was ‘no divine service, no christening of children, no receiving of the sacrament, no Christian meeting or assembly, no, not once in the year; in a word no more demonstration of religion than amongst Tartars or cannibals.’ The bishops were but too often partakers in the prevalent corruption, and Davies suggested that visitors should be sent from England, ‘such as never heard a cow speak and understand not that language,’ a gift of cattle being the usual means of bribery in Ireland. Neither Loftus nor Jones were disinterested men, but they did take some pains to provide respectable incumbents, Englishmen for the most part, and Davies who did not like either of them, reported that the Pale was ‘not so universally Catholic as Sir Patrick Barnewall and some others would affirm it to be.’ That was all he could say, and it was not much.[446 - Sir John Davies to Cecil, Feb. 20, 1604, and May 4, 1606; certificates to Dublin and Meath dioceses, calendared under 1604, Nos. 267 and 268.]

Foundation of Trinity College, Dublin

Archbishop Loftus had prevented Perrott from turning his cathedral of St. Patrick’s into a college, but he helped to provide the means from another source. In 1166 Dermot MacMurrough had founded the priory of All-Hallows for Aroasian canons, just outside Dublin, and by a curious coincidence the man who introduced the English into Ireland thus unwittingly set apart the ground on which the most successful of Anglo-Irish institutions was destined to be built. In 1538 the priory was granted to the city of Dublin; and in 1590 the Corporation were induced to offer the property, which was valued at 20l. a year, as a site for the new college. In 1579 the Queen had entertained the idea of a university at Clonfert, on account of its central position; ‘for that the runagates of that nation, which under pretence of study in the universities beyond the seas, do return freight with superstition and treason, are the very instruments to stir up our subjects to rebellion.’ Nothing came of that plan, perhaps because the bishops were expected to provide the means of realising it, and as there was no education to be had at home, the young gentlemen had continued to resort to universities where the Queen was considered an excommunicated heretic. The offer of the Dublin citizens was now accepted, and the monastic buildings, all but the steeple, were at once pulled down. Henry Ussher, a native of Dublin, but a graduate both of Oxford and Cambridge, who was afterwards Primate, and who was at this time Archdeacon, deserves credit for successfully carrying out the negotiations, and the charter recites that it was he who had petitioned the Queen in the name of the city to found the college. Loftus was the first provost, Ussher himself, with two other fellows and three scholars, being appointed in the same instrument. Burghley was the first chancellor, Essex the second, and Robert Cecil the third. After the siege of Kinsale 1,800l. was subscribed by the army for a library, which thus began at the same time as Bodley’s, and the great collection of Archbishop James Ussher was virtually secured by a subscription of 2,200l. in Cromwell’s army. Trinity College was founded as the mother of a university, but no second house was ever opened, and in common language the college and the university are treated as one and the same.[447 - The charter, as well as the deed of gift from the city of Dublin, are in Morrin’s Patent Rolls, ii. p. 345, and see p. 21; Taylor’s History of the University. There is a good account, from a Presbyterian point of view, in Killen’s Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. pp. 447-455.]

Protestant character of the college

A Puritan provost

The Scotch element

From the first, Trinity College was under Protestant management, and was intended to counteract the influence of the seminaries at Salamanca and other places abroad. And in Ireland, since the masses adhered to Rome, Protestantism has ever naturally tended to the Puritan rather than to the Anglican side. Loftus himself had been a friend of Cartwright. Dr. Travers, the second provost, is claimed by the Presbyterians, and he was certainly a strenuous opponent of Richard Hooker. James Fullerton and James Hamilton, the first elected fellows, were Scotchmen; and seem to have been educated at St Andrews, under Andrew Melville, to whose opinions they may very probably have inclined. Fullerton and Hamilton, while enjoying some portion of Elizabeth’s favour, were James VI.’s secret agents, and it is supposed that Cecil sometimes sent through them letters, which it might have been dangerous to trust to the ordinary channels. The two Scots kept a school in Ship Street, Dublin, and had the honour of teaching James Ussher from his ninth to his fourteenth year. The first buildings were erected by public subscription, and some of the subscribers were Roman Catholics, but Archer the Jesuit was collecting about the same time for the Salamanca seminary. The danger was understood from the first, and a petition to the Pope calls attention to a ‘certain splendid college near Dublin, the capital of Ireland, where the youths of Ireland are instructed in heresy by English teachers.’ In 1609 Trinity is officially called ‘the fanatics’ college’ by the Irish Jesuits.[448 - Neal’s History of the Puritans, vol. i., for Travers; Lowry’s Hamilton MSS., pp. 1-9, and Bruce’s Correspondence of James VI. and Cecil, for Fullerton and Hamilton. Hibernia Ignatiana, pp. 37 and 39. ‘Litteræ Annuæ’ of the Irish Jesuits, 1609, in Spicilegium Ossoriense.]

Irish seminaries abroad

Trinity College being out of the question, the Irish priesthood continued to be educated abroad, and O’Sullivan gives a list of towns where they had seminaries of their own, or, at least, special facilities. At Salamanca, Compostella, and Lisbon these institutions came into Jesuit hands; and there was a fourth at Seville. The Irish Franciscans had great privileges at Louvain, and there were Irish seminaries at Antwerp, Douai, and Tournai. Those who preferred the dominions of the Most Christian to those of the Most Catholic King, might find classes ready to receive them at Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Paris. In 1624 the famous Rothe and four other Irish prelates declared that the Parisian seminary had supplied many men distinguished in virtue, doctrine, and zeal, for the work of the Church in Ireland. ‘And so,’ says O’Sullivan, ‘crowds of Irish priests inundate Ireland, some educated in convents, some in seminaries, and some at the expense of their parents, and they partly, if not altogether, repair the damage which the English have done by upsetting the religious houses and seats of holy learning.’[449 - O’Sullivan, tom. iv. lib. i. cap. 17; Spicilegium Ossoriense, vol. i. p. 133.]

Books and printing

The Prayer Book

Irish types

The Bible in Irish

The first book ever printed in Dublin was Edward VI.’s first Book of Common Prayer. It was printed by Humphrey Powell in 1551, professedly by St. Leger’s command, and it contains a prayer for Sir James Croft. A copy is preserved in Trinity College, and Dr. Todd doubted if there were a second in existence. The only other known specimen of Powell’s work is Sidney’s Book of the Articles printed in 1566. Edward’s second Prayer Book, says Dr. Ball, ‘was never, either by statute or order, introduced, nor was it at all used in the Irish Church; but it forms the basis of that which under Elizabeth was authorised for Ireland.’ Orders were given that the Prayer Book of 1557 should be translated into Irish, for use in places where English was not understood, but this was never done. It is probable that no competent translator could then be found, and certain that the means of printing did not yet exist. Queen Elizabeth afterwards provided a press and fount of Irish type, ‘in hope that God in his mercy would raise up some to translate the New Testament into their mother tongue.’ In 1571 a Catechism was produced by Nicholas Walsh, Chancellor, and John Kearney, Treasurer of St. Patrick’s, both Cambridge men, and this is the first work printed in Irish. There is a copy in the Bodleian, and Dr. Cotton had never heard of any other. Walsh, who became Bishop of Ossory, obtained an order to publish a translation of the Prayer Book for use in country places. He also began an Irish version of the New Testament, and his fellow-worker, Kearney, is said to have proceeded far in the work. It was reserved for William Daniel, Archbishop of Tuam, a Kilkenny man and one of the original scholars of Trinity, to publish the New Testament in Irish: his predecessor, Archbishop Donellan, having worked in the same field. Daniel’s printer was John Francke. Whatever may have been done towards a translation of the Old Testament by Kearney, Daniel, and other scholars, the work was only completed by Bishop Bedell, and, its publication having been delayed by the outbreak of the Rebellion in 1641, it did not appear until 1685.[450 - Gilbert’s History of Dublin, vol. i. pp. 29, 186, 383, 385; Ball’s Reformed Church of Ireland, chaps. iii. and iv.; Cotton’s Fasti; Bedell’s Life, printed by the Camden Society, and the articles on Bedell, Daniel, and Robert Boyle in the new Dictionary of National Biography. William Kearney, who printed the proclamation against Tyrone in 1595, may have been related to the Treasurer of St. Patrick’s; see above chap. xlv.]