*

laws, and indeed somewhat sharply dealt withal now, it should be no small furtherance to your majesty's proceedings, and their example should be a great cause to bring the rest and meaner sort to a godly reformation."

This report has been given at length, because nothing but the words of their own authorities will be admitted by many Protestants against the audacious assertions of Dr. Mant and others, that the Irish generally adhered to the established worship during the first years of Elizabeth's reign. This report, on the contrary, proves that down to the year 1565 very few of the noblemen or gentlemen of the pale had ever received the Protestant communion or attended any Protestant service, and that generally they attended Mass. In truth, the statutes of 1560 were on this matter, as well as some others, as much a dead letter, even in the pale, as the Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1850. Does not this fact confirm the tradition already mentioned, that the statutes of 1560 were passed clandestinely through Parliament? or are we to admit, would a jury of peers admit, that their Irish brethren who had honour enough to plead guilty at their peril to the non-observance of statutes, could have had so little honour as to vote, in so solemn a matter as religion, for the enactment of those same statutes which their subsequent conduct proves they had not the least intention of observing? At any rate, it is quite clear that the lords of the pale, who were one-half of the temporal lords in the Parliament of 1560, were as much opposed to the Reformation as the mass of the people. Let us next inquire how it was with other lords, not of the pale.

With regard to ten of them, lords of English descent, they ruled with sovereign sway in three provinces of the island; and it might be at once assumed, therefore, that they were not less faithful to the old creed than their brethren of the pale, unless indeed there be clear proofs to the contrary, unless we find them enforcing in their territories the new statutes. Now, from evidence already produced it is manifest that they did not enforce these statutes; for beyond the three dioceses of Armagh, Dublin, and Meath, the Reformation had made no progress whatever down to the year 1565. Readers acquainted with even the ordinary accounts of Elizabeth's reign will at once recognise among these ten Anglo-Irish lords many whose names have been indelibly, and for their temporal interests fatally, identified with the Catholic faith. They were Thomas Earl of Ormonde, Gerald Earl of Desmond, Richard

*This is the true spirit of his class in Ireland: there never yet was an oppressive measure of which the majority of the established clergy were not either the authors or abettors.

Earl of Clanrickard, James Barry Lord Butterant, Maurice Roche Lord Fermoy, Richard Butler Lord Mountgarret, Thomas Fitzmaurice Lord Lisenan, John Power Lord Curraghmore, Birmingham Lord Atherry, and Courcy Lord Kinsale.

Thomas Earl of Ormonde, commonly called "Black Tom," was nominally a Protestant, but he died a Catholic in 1614.* He was Elizabeth's right arm in the south of Ireland in political matters. Of his zeal for the Reformation in the first years of her reign, we may judge from the fact that all his own brothers were up in rebellion after the excommunication pronounced by Pius V. in 1569;† and that though his power was regal in the greater part of the archdiocese of Cashel, she did not (as we shall see) attempt to appoint an archbishop there until nine years after her accession. Even in Kilkenny, the seat of the Ormondes, the Catholic Bishop Thonory held possession of his see until his death in 1567, though the government did not of course recognise him as bishop. Gerald Earl of Desmond, the last unfortunate earl of that title, lost his 500,000 acres by his armed resistance to the Reformation. In the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign he promised in one of his submissions to advance the religion established by law, of which, however, he confesses he knew nothing; but there is no proof that he ever endeavoured to fulfil this promise. On the contrary, there are numerous proofs of the jealousy with which the government always regarded him, and which the event justified. If he cannot claim the honours of consistent adherence to the Catholic faith, he certainly cannot at any period of his life be claimed as a sincere advocate of the Reformation. If he had voted for it or shewn any zeal for it in the Parliament of 1560, his mind changed so rapidly that two years later the government thought it necessary to exact from him, in his hour of need, a promise to comply with it. Richard Earl of Clanrickard never directly or indirectly conformed to the established creed. None of his successors for a hundred and fifty years after the Reformation conformed; his name appears in no commission for advancing it; when his sons were burning the church of Athenry in which a Protestant minister had been established, some persons remonstrated with them because their mother was buried in the church. 66 "If," they answered, "she were alive, they would rather burn her and the church together, than that any English church should fortify there."§ Richard, their father, was imprisoned twice * O'Sullivan, Hist. Cath. 290. + Cox, Hibernia Anglicana, vol. i. p. 333. Hardiman's Statute of Kilkenny, p. 90; Shirley's Original Letters, p. § Cox, vol. i. p. 336.

116.

by the English at two critical periods of the religious wars; first in 1572, and again in 1576, from which time he was kept in prison either in Dublin or London, until he was allowed to go home to die in 1582.* Of the other Anglo-Irish lords, as being less influential, not so much is known. Lords Kinsale and Courcy make no figure in history. Birmingham Lord Atherry should perhaps be regarded as a lord of the pale, his great castle of Casterry being on the borders; his religion was therefore probably that of his brother-lords of the pale. The family of Barry Lord Butterant were faithful to Elizabeth, but Catholic; Lords Fermoy, Mountgarret, and Lisenan were in the Catholic army under Hugh O'Neil, nor is there any proof of the zeal of any of their predecessors for the reformed faith.†

In closing this brief notice of the Anglo-Irish lords present in the Parliament of 1560, we beg the reader to observe, that we do not deny but that some two or three of them were professing Protestants; and that many of them consented to receive from Elizabeth grants of Church property. Many, especially of the lords of the pale, had received portions of that property before Mary's accession, and had their titles to it confirmed by her Parliament. This willingness, however, to share the spoils of the Church cannot be considered as a profession of Protestantism, for it had been practised only too extensively in Ireland even before the Reformation. What we assert, and assert with confidence, is this, that among all the lords who were present in that Parliament, there cannot be found more than two or three who ever gave any practical adhesion to the doctrines of Protestantism, or any proof that they had even voted for the enactments of 1560; while the Catholicity of the great majority of them is established by incontestable proof. §

Moreover, it must be remembered that these twenty-three lords were not a full representation even of the titled nobility

* O'Sullivan, p. 97, note.

+ See a list of the Catholic adherents of Elizabeth in O'Sullivan, p. 141. "The princes and lords of Ireland were split into two great and powerful factions, the one English and Royalist, the other Írish and Catholic (i. e. insurgent). All those of English descent, for the most part, ranged themselves under the standard of heresy, though they were Catholics, preferring, like heathens, the cause of that nation from which they sprung, to the Catholic religion which they love and venerate." "Of those lords who assisted the heretics, three or four were heretics, but against their conscience, and merely as time-servers (sed scienter errantes et temporibus servientes); all the others were practical Catholics," p. 143.

O'Sullivan, p. 85, note.

§ See, for instance, the testimony of Cox, Hibernia Anglicana, ii. p. 76; and the Catholic families cited there "who had signalised their loyalty in all former rebellions." Among these Catholics in 1641 (the period referred to) was Valerian Wesley, lineal ancestor of the Duke of Wellington. Berlare's Irish Rebellion, p. 43.

of Ireland, much less of all the native Irish princes. Several of the latter who had accepted titles from Henry VIII., and some Anglo-Irish (the Burkes of North Connaught, for instance), whose possessions were very extensive, were not present in this Parliament. The only two native Irish lords present were O'Brien Earl of Thomond, and Fitzpatrick, Lord of Upper Ossory. The former gave no proof of his Protestantism until the year 1572, but was rather considered down to that date as a champion of the old faith.* So little did most of the Irish chieftains, especially of the north, dream of giving their adhesion to the enactments of 1560, that we find the Catholic Primate of Ireland, Richard Creogh, after escaping from the Tower of London, preaching in his cathedral of Armagh to the O'Neils and O'Donnells in 1566, and receiving from them the assurance that it would not be their fault if he did not continue to enjoy his dignity as securely as any of his Catholic predecessors. Indeed, Elizabeth's power in the county of Down, the most English part of the north, appears from the following letter of Loftus, Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, to Sir William Cecil:-" May 16, 1565. It may like your honour to be advertised, that though it pleased the queen's majestie to bestow the bishopric of Down on the bearer James M'Caughwell, yet he cannot enjoy the same, by reason that Shane O'Neil's brother presently possesseth that bishopric by color of a grant thereof procured from Rome (as we are credibly informed), for which cause the said Cawell dareth not travel to Down for fear of bodily harm."

as

So much, then, for the temporal peers who assisted at the Parliament of 1560. Let us turn now to the spiritual peers who were present. According to the published list, there were twenty of them, and the character they receive from Protestant writers varies according to circumstances; that is, according to the special object which the writer has immediately in view. If the apostolical succession of the present Established Church is to be proved, then these bishops are appealed to, having given their free and enlightened assent to the change of religion, and taken their high place among the honoured fathers of the Reformation ;§ but if the charge made by Catholics against the Protestant prelates of Elizabeth's reign, of having made frightful havoc of the Church's property, is to be repelled, then these very same bishops are disowned and denounced as Papists, or at best as neuters, and Elizabeth herself is severely arraigned for having allowed them to retain * O'Sullivan,, p. 90. + Shirley,, p. 327. Ibid. p. 192. Perceval's Apology for the Doctrine of Apostolical Succession, Appendix, p. 260; Palmer's Treatise on the Church, vol. ii. pp. 559-569.

possession of their sees. Deferring to another place an inquiry into the real authors of the dilapidation of episcopal property, we now proceed to prove, first, that this Parliament did not represent the Irish Church; secondly, that the presence of bishops in this Parliament is no proof of their apostasy; and finally, that except three or four of them, none ever gave any adhesion to Protestantism.

In the first place then, six of the Ulster and three of the Connaught bishops were certainly absent, namely, Derry, Raphoe, Clogher, Kilmore, Dromore, and Armagh;† Achonry, Kilmacdrogh, and Kilfenora; nor was any abbot present, though many of them had assisted in Queen Mary's Irish Parliament. No Protestant bishop had even the titles of the two first, nor the possession of the four first sees, during any part of the reign of Elizabeth. § On the whole, we think it is very doubtful whether twenty bishops assisted at the Parliament; there is no authority for the statement but a record preserved in the Rolls Office, which is by no means conclusive; for according to a similar record there were twenty-six bishops in the Parliament of 1585, though it is certain that one of these twenty-six bishops was dead two years before; and another bishop, the famous Myler M'Grath, figures three times in the record, first as Archbishop of Cashel, next as Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, and lastly as Bishop of Clogher; while another bishop is counted twice, first as Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, and next as Bishop of Ross. In truth, from the Loftus Mss. it is highly probable that of the long array of twenty-six not more than twelve assisted in the Parliament of 1585. Who will venture to assert that dead men are not also on the record of 1560, and that others are not enrolled twice, especially when no account can be discovered of two of them, the Bishops of Ross and Killala, and when the names of the last six on the list are given in a style both unusual and admirably fitted for making one name stand for

* Cox, Hibernia Anglic, vol. ii. Appendix vi.. p. 21..

The date commonly assigned for the last primate's (Dindal) death is 1558. But it appears manifest that when the Pope's nuncio and Richard Creogh, the future primate, first met, some time after August 1560, Armagh was not vacant. Shirley, p. 172.

O'Sullivan's Hist. Cath. p. 85, note..

Myler M'Grath was appointed to Clogher, and Gurney to Kilmore; but neither had more than the title.

|| Fitzmaurice, Bishop of Kerry, who died 1583 (Four Masters); nor was any government successor named until 1588.

Allen of Ferns is also counted twice, for that see and Down. No Christian name is given, but simply the titles of the sees ranged in order; so that any person not acquainted with the history of the bishops would conclude there were twenty-six bishops present. See the document in Hardiman's Statute of Kilkenny, p. 139.