Cranworth is a man of honesty and integrity; and if he had had the decision, the defendants would have demanded it, and had no doubt as to what it would have been. But, alas, the validity of the transaction would have to be decided by a jury, and a jury chosen out of that very public whose prejudices had been diligently fed day after day with the most exciting statements made on behalf of the plaintiff, but from whom every word of the defence was being carefully withheld. They felt, therefore, that justice had no chance. Their counsel advised a compromise. The other side, knowing they had no case, (or otherwise why should they have given in ?) gladly acceded; but the defendants would not agree to it, unless the plaintiffs withdrew the charges of fraudulent conduct, and took those foul affidavits off the file. This was done; the plaintiffs received half the property; and Lord Brougham, Mr. Bethell, and Mr. Brown could congratulate themselves upon having been concerned in depriving a deserving Catholic charity of half an endowment, obtained under circumstances which they all three well knew, and one of them had deliberately declared, were "perfectly fair and satisfactory."

Such was English justice in the case of Carré; and such are the cases which, in the hands of Protestant lawyers and with the help of an unprincipled Protestant press, are made to assume certain false colours and proportions, by means of which not only is the popular prejudice against our clergy strengthened and increased, but the Headlams, the Spooners, and the Newdegates of our legislature feel themselves encouraged to propose, and may not improbably be actually enabled to carry, new laws which shall still further impede the exercise of Christian charity. In the present instance, indeed, the libellous affidavits imputing undue influence, and even violence, to the priest, were afterwards withdrawn; but the impression upon the public mind which those affidavits had created, and which they were intended to create, are not so easily removed. The case of Metairie v. Wiseman has now become part of the regular "stock in trade" of the platformorators of Exeter Hall, and will be quoted again and again as a striking instance of the "rapacity of the Popish clergy," availing themselves of "the terrors of dying men." With what justice, the preceding narrative (which is compiled from the sworn affidavits of all the parties concerned) sufficiently shews. On the one hand, the priest against whom all this obloquy has been directed had only seen the dying man twice, and only once alone, and then only for a very short time; and the landlord swore that, when the priest was gone, Carré repeated to him what had passed between them, so that, if the landlord's

evidence were true, the influence of the priest could not have been very great. The landlord, on the other hand, from the moment the poor old man lay prostrate on his bed, dependent for his support on the almost hourly ministration of nourishing food, had him absolutely in his own power; moreover, by his own confession, he was continually and incessantly urgent with the dying man that he would make a better provision for him in his will; and yet not a syllable of reproach is heard as to any "undue influence" that had been exercised by this man, notwithstanding that his case comes precisely within the definition which we quoted in our last from the great Protestant authority in this matter, Swinborne; "when the testator is under the government of the persuader, and in his danger" (i.e. in peril of his power). "And therefore if the physitian, during the time of sickness, be instant with the testator to give him his goods, the testament is not good; for the law presumeth that the testator did it lest the physitian should forsake him or negligently cure him." This landlord stood in the case of the physician; by "forsaking or negligently curing him," the testator's death would have been accelerated; he acknowledged that he was "instant with the testator to give him his goods," and the testator gave them; yet his influence is not complained of, the legacies left to him are not impeached. Truly, the moral of the case seems to be this, that according to the standard of ethics recognised by public opinion in a Protestant country, a man may lawfully use any influence on a dying man for the benefit of his own pocket; but that influence exercised for the benefit of a charity is "undue influence," more especially if it has been exercised by a priest.

A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN IRELAND.

Elizabeth's first Irish Parliament.

In discussions on the re-settlement of Church property in Ireland, advocates of the Established Church frequently assert that this, property was transferred to its present uses by an act of the Irish nation assembled in Parliament in the second year of Elizabeth, January 12, 1559-60. The Irish Bishops, it is maintained, were present; and not only did not oppose the spoliation of the Catholic Church, but conformed very generally to the Anglican heresy. A settlement of this his

torical question can influence very slightly, we fear, the conflicting claims of the rival Churches at the present day. If one hundred Irish legislators voted the establishment of Protestantism three hundred years ago, their votes cannot prove that the Irish Church has not been ever since an injustice unparalleled in the annals of nations, civilised or savage; if these legislators did not vote its establishment, if the Irish statutes of 1560 never received their assent, Drs. Whately and Beresford would not, therefore, be more easily induced to resign their princely palaces and broad acres to the nation, much less to Archbishops Cullen and Dixon. If, then, we undertake to discuss the point, it is purely as a matter of history; and we shall the more carefully abstain from exaggeration or vituperation, as we think we have something important to communicate, not generally known to our readers.

An act of Parliament, old or new, is a very good thing when it falls in with our prejudices, and fills our pockets with money; and Anglicans, therefore, very naturally cherish Elizabeth's first Irish Parliament as being the very keystone of their Church in that country. But they can throw a veil over the proceedings of that Church when opposed to acts of Parliament. They had no act of Parliament for their heresies introduced into the Irish Church by Edward VI.; their first Bishops, Brown of Dublin, Staples of Meath, Bale of Ossory, and Casey of Limerick, took wives, not only against the canons of the Church, but also against an existing act of Parliament; Edward's heretical liturgy was introduced into a few Irish cathedrals in spite of all law both civil and ecclesiastical. All these innovations were brought about solely by the authority of a king's letter in council; nor has any Anglican writer ever attempted to assign any other sanction for them.* Elizabeth herself, before she ever summoned an Irish Parliament, commanded her English servants in Ireland to use her liturgy in their houses, and by her high prerogative exempted them from impeachment for thus violating acts of Parliament and the laws of the Church; and even though she had pursued this line of conduct uniformly to the end, though she had never summoned an Irish Parliament at all, but had robbed the Church by a letter in council or by royal proclamation, we feel confident that her measures and her memory would have been just as zealously defended by those who now plead her

* Dr. Mant's History of the Church of Ireland, vol. i. pp. 188-192. Shirley's Original Letters, p. 90. These Letters, lately published (London, 1851), confirm all that was generally believed of the uncanonical and purely secular means adopted by Edward VI. to suppress the Catholic religion in Ireland.

acts of Parliament. And, for our own part, we think that the bolder would have been the better course; for her Parliament, such as it was, only added fraud to force, treachery to tyranny. It represented neither the nobility, nor the commonalty, nor the clergy of Ireland; the great majority of those who are s id to have assisted at it never approved its enactments, or certainly never observed them; it was not an act of the Irish. nation; and it left the Protestant clergy, what, for the most part, they have been ever since, chaplains to a garrison of English adventurers and landlords. Never, even for one hour during Elizabeth's reign, could they be called the clergy of the Irish people. Our adversaries themselves admit the truth of this assertion with regard to the last thirty years of her reign. In the following paper, therefore, we shall restrict ourselves to the first years, and shew that it is equally true of them also.

*

And first, let us speak of the House of Commons in this vaunted Irish Parliament, which is said to have voted for the establishment of Protestantism. According to the published list, it consisted of seventy-six members; twenty from ten counties, and fifty-six from twenty-eight cities or boroughs. There was no county member for any part of Ulster or Connaught, though parts of both provinces had been represented in preceding Parliaments. These provinces, comprising fully one-half of Ireland, had only six borough members; two from Carrickfergus, and two each from Galway and Atherry. Of the six counties of Munster, two only were represented, namely, Tipperary and Waterford; and even in Leinster, four of the present counties, namely, the King's and Queen's Counties, Longford, and Wicklow, were not represented. Thus the county representation in this Parliament included little more than one-fourth of the island. Of the borough members the great majority were returned from places in eight Leinster counties. Munster sent only sixteen members, from Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Dungarvan, Youghall, Fethard, Clonmel, and Kinsale; while Leinster sent thirtyfour members from seventeen boroughs or cities. Thus, of the whole representatives in the Commons, two-thirds were returned from a part only of the present province of Leinster. Will any one pretend that the votes of such a Parliament can with any propriety be considered the will of the Commons of Ireland?

Moreover, if it is true that these members consented to the establishment of the Protestant religion, it can only have been in order that both themselves and their constituents might have the luxury of violating all the enactments which they * Tracts relating to Ireland, vol. ii. p. 135. Irish Archæologica! Society.

are said to have made; for, according to these enactments, attendance at the Protestant worship was prescribed under penalty of fine, the Catholic worship was prohibited, and the oath of supremacy required as a qualification for all offices, both civil and religious. Now, in the first place, attendance at Protestant worship was simply an impossibility in all the counties, except half the counties of Louth, Meath, Dublin, and Kildare, beyond which the Irish language alone was understood.* The Protestant Prayer-book was not translated into that language. The reformers, it is true, convicted themselves of dishonesty by dispensing in what they said was God's law; they sanctioned the translation of the Prayer-book into Latin (an unknown tongue) for the use of those places in which the English was not understood; but even this selfconvicted imposture was not carried into effect. If, then, the county members voted for this Protestant Prayer-book, they voted for what they knew was at the time an impossibility for their constituents, and which continued so during the whole reign of Elizabeth. This argument does not apply with equal force to the boroughs, in some of which, especially in Leinster, the English language was understood; and the Protestant service therefore was possible, if the people wished to attend it. That they had no such wish, however, is perfectly clear from the unexceptionable evidence of the first reformers themselves, who declaim against the blindness and obduracy of the Irish, with as much pathos and violence as the most accredited organs of English bigotry at the present day. Brown, Bishop of Dublin, complained that the Irish were as zealous for the Papacy as the saints and martyrs ever were for the truth.§ Cromwell's name was as odious to their ears as that of his too-famous namesake Oliver was to their descendants; and they gave an unequivocal testimony of their detestation of his measures by preserving the Church and monastic lands of three provinces for their lawful owners, notwithstanding Henry's confiscations and grants.|| Bale of Ossory,

*These half-counties were the English pale in 1515. The pale was becoming even more Irish in the course of Elizabeth's reign, if we may believe English writers, Craik, first Protestant bishop of Kildare, complains that even in that diocese "neither I can preach to the people, nor the people understand me." Shirley, Original Letters, &c. p. 95.

Irish types were sent over in 1571; but the Irish Testament was not printed until 1603.

Shirley has proved that the "whole service of the Communion" had been translated into Latin, by order of the Lord Deputy, in the year 1549 or 1550; and that it was his intention to have it speedily printed. Original Letters, p. 47. But there is no proof that this intention was carried into effect.

§ Cox, Hibernia Anglicana, vol. iv. pp. 246-257.

"How many frere (friar) howses and others remayne using the old Papiste