bunals, is doing nothing but mischief; to give to one body, again, the power of administering or controlling the administration of charities, and another the power of redressing abuses

and that, too, the very court which has for so many ages been denounced as incompetent to redress them-is really augmenting the evil. But the truth is, that ministers look at all these questions merely as questions of patronage; and lawyers too often look upon them as questions of profit by means of litigation. The real problem is to avoid patronage and litigation; the new measure will augment both. Lord John Russell, in the course of the speech in which he announced his intentions as to charitable trusts, made a short statement on the subject, which it is much to our purpose to repeat. He said the commissions, which had sat from 1812 to 1837, had made their reports in 38 folio volumes, and had reported on nearly -30,000 charities, the annual income of which was 1,209,3951.; and that of this sum the amount belonging to educational charities was not less than 312,000l. He also went on to say that charities were often ruined by litigation; and by way of instance, he mentioned an income of 3000l. which had been reduced by litigation in Chancery down to 15%.! Need we say more? Is not our case proved? Our case is, that the experience of Protestant trusts since the Reformation proves that a secular and legal administration of charitable trusts is not so good, not so just, so efficient, or so economical as a domestic forum, such as the charitable commissions under the act of Elizabeth. With the inconsistency, however, which results from an ignorance or disregard of sound principle on the subject, Lord J. Russell positively proposes to leave the redress of existing abuses to the Court of Chancery, and the general administration to a Government commission, controlled by a committee of the Privy Council. It is easy to see that the Scope of this measure is centralisation, and that its fruits WI be increased litigation. On this, as on all other occasions since the Revolution, the act of Elizabeth is consigned to oblivion as obsolete. No allusion is made to it; it is simply ignored. Yet we have seen that our greatest lawyers at one time rejoiced to co-operate in carrying it out; and such men as Bacon and Clarendon were certainly superior to such as Cottenham. For ourselves, we are satisfied that this act of Elizabeth embodies the true principles upon which charitable trusts ought to be administered; and since the subject is one which has a very practical bearing upon Catholic interests in this country at the present moment, we rejoice that we have called our readers' attention to it, and at least done something towards enabling them more thoroughly to appreciate its importance.

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LIFE OF RICHARD CREAGH, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. THOUGH Protestant historians have been not unjustly charged with misrepresenting the history of the Reformation in Ireland, there is, it must be confessed, some excuse for their errors in the very careless and conflicting accounts given by Catholics themselves of some of the most distinguished martyrs and confessors of the old faith. If there was one Catholic prelate during Elizabeth's reign whose life might be expected to be known and studied by Irish Catholics, Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, was certainly that man. Born in a city pre-eminent even in Ireland for fidelity to the faith, sprung from the middle classes of the people, then and ever since faithful to the Church, entering the sacred ministry at the very moment when Elizabeth was proscribing it, experiencing in his own person all the trials to which his successors were to be subjected, betrayed by his own, calumniated by a false brother in the episcopacy, loyal where loyalty was not due, imprisoned, and tried by a tyrannical judge, resisting during a long captivity of nearly twenty years all temptations to apostacy, and closing his honoured life in the Tower of London, he appears to want none of those qualities that should endear his memory to that Church which he taught so faithfully how to win the martyr's crown in the persecutions then closing around her. Yet both in the more ancient sketches of his life, and in others lately published, there is much confusion and contradiction; possibly we may not be able to remove them altogether, but we shall at least give a more full and consistent account than has yet been published.

Richard Creagh, more correctly Crevagh, and in Irish O'Mulchreibe, was born in the city of Limerick, of a respectamy, probably about the year 1525. At an early age he was apprenticed by his parents (Nicholas and Johanna. White) in his native city, with many other respectable young men, to a merchant engaged in the then lucrative commerce of spices and saffron, an article generally used by the native Irish for dyeing their dress. In the war with France in 1546, he lost his share in a ship captured by the French, and valued at 9000 ducats. Whether this loss may have influenced him to think of another state of life is not stated by his biographers. According to some, his vocation was decided during a voyage to Spain. His ship was freighted with merchandise in a Spanish port, ready to weigh anchor for Ireland; but he had resolved to hear Mass before he embarked, and on returning from the church to the shore he saw the vessel under

sail clearing the port. He called out, but in vain; for either by a sudden gust of wind or by mis-management, she went down, and all on board perished. From that moment he resolved to consecrate himself to God, and immediately commenced his ecclesiastical studies. This voyage to Spain is not mentioned, however, by his more trustworthy biographer, who represents a delicacy of conscience about the dangers of the trade in which he was engaged as having been the occasion of his call to the ecclesiastical state; he shuddered at the indifference with which less sensitive consciences weighed out moist saffron to their customers, and he used all possible exertions to avoid that injustice himself. But his heart was not in the trade: against the pressing entreaties of his parents and friends, who could see at that time nothing but peril in the prospects of an Irish Catholic priest, he obtained his master's consent, renounced business, and after mastering whatever knowledge of Latin a city without a school could supply, he proceeded to Louvain, probably about the year 1551.

After a distinguished course of classics and philosophy he took out his degree of master of arts, and in due time became bachelor of divinity. He returned to his native city, after an absence of seven or eight years, resolved, as he tells us, to dispense for the good of his own country what he learned "at the Emperor Charles and other good men's cost." And greatly were then required the zeal and intelligence of such a priest. Elizabeth's first Irish parliament had just proscribed the Catholic faith; the strong attachment of the citizens to the English crown, and the general ignorance regarding the precise nature of the changes introduced, endangered the fidelity of the people. Richard lost no time, under the guidance of De Lacy, the Catholic bishop of the see, in denouncing, in public and private, in season and out of season, the oath of supremacy and attendance at the Protestant worship. His labours were confined principally to his native diocese; and whatever time could be spared from the essential duties of the mission he devoted to a school, in which he was aided by Leverous, the deprived bishop of Kildare. A very humble occupation this may appear now, but it was then felt to be the great duty of the priest, as Ireland had none of those institutions which had once made her illustrious: the towns, bowed down by the spirit of provincial colonists, had neither schools nor colleges; the native Irish princes were either too poor or too insecure to establish them; the government resisted moreover every such attempt; and the hierarchy, divided in itself and for the most part at the beck of government, had not provided for the education of the people. "Grievously,"

exclaims our biographer, "had our ancestors sinned in this matter, that from supine negligence they left no provision for the education of youth." Richard's zeal and high repute for learning attracted the attention of the nuncio, David Wolfe, who arrived at Limerick in August 1560, charged especially with providing for the vacant sees. He was at once destined for the see either of Armagh or Cashel, both then vacant, and was commanded, in virtue of the oath taken by the bachelors of divinity, to proceed to Rome. He expressed a decided repugnance to this promotion; but in obedience to his oath, and not without hopes that he might be permitted to enter the order of Theatines at Rome, he left Ireland for that city in August 1562. His whole travelling charges on his departure were 20 crowns of his own, 40 from the nuncio, and 12 marks from De Lacy, Bishop of Limerick. Arriving in Rome in January 1563, he delivered to the general of the Jesuits 'the letter written to Cardinal Moroni by the Irish nuncio ; and was ordered in the month of February by Cardinal Gonzaga, who then held the place of Moroni, absent at the Council of Trent, not to think of entering any religious order until the Pope's pleasure was known. The order was soon given he was commanded, under pain of excommunication, to prepare for consecration as Archbishop of Armagh; was examined on St. Patrick's day 1564, and consecrated by Lomelino and another bishop in the Pope's chapel the following Easter. Under the eye of Pope Pius IV., to whom our archbishop was specially dear, there were collected at that time in Rome several distinguished Irish priests, who had also been sent over by David Wolfe. These were the hope of the Irish Church. Three of them had already taken their places in the Council of Trent as Irish bishops, and several others were supported in Rome with their retinue at the Pope's special charge. Richard was placed on this list as soon as he was ordered to prepare for consecration: "he had daily meat, drink, and wine for himself and his servants at the Pope's cost, paying for his house-room six crowns by the month; he had apparel of three sorts, of blue and unwatered chamlet, and wore the same in Rome, having four or five servants waiting there on him in his household also, and supported at his own expense, were two or three poor scholars.' These particulars, and many others too numerous to be mentioned, were elicited from him by the inquisitorial interrogatories in the Tower of London. In the month of July 1564 he received the Pope's blessing, and set out on horseback from Rome, accompanied part of the way by a priest, and the entire journey by an Ulster student. The fatigue of this summer

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journey reduced a constitution not naturally strong; and by the time of his arrival at Augsburg he was attacked by an ague, which compelled him to accept for a week the kind hospitality of the Cardinal of Augsburg. Starting with restored health, he proceeded to Antwerp, where he met John Clement, tutor of the children of Sir Thomas More, and then an exile for the faith. Prevented from sailing immediately, he hastened his steps to his beloved Louvain, where his heart was cheered by some Irish students, and where for the first time he appeared publicly as Archbishop of Armagh since his departure from Rome. In memory of old times, he gave a grand banquet to the doctors of the university, "sitting with them in his archbishoprick's apparel of blue chamlet, which he did not wear in any other place since he came from Rome." Embarking in a ship bound for Ireland, he was driven ashore at Dover; and in his own words, "being arrived in England, he was unknown; and at Rochester he found an Irish boy begging, whom he took with him to London, and there lodged at the Three Cups in Broad Street, in October 1564, where he tarried past three days; and at his being in London, he went to Paul's Church, and there walked, but had no talk with any man; and also to Westminster Abbey, to see the monuments there; and from thence he went to Westminster Hall, at the time that he heard Bonner was to be arraigned there." Within less than one short year, our fearless primate was himself to be arraigned there; for though the abomination of desolation was not yet set up in Irish churches as in Westminster and St. Paul's, the dangers of the Irish mission had considerably increased since his departure, and there were especially for him difficulties trying at any time in the circumstances of that diocese to which he had been appointed.

Nearly the whole archdiocese was at this period under the absolute control of John O'Neil, a prince of great energy and not a few noble qualities, but who though never faithless to the Catholic Church, regarded it as it has been too often regarded, as an acolyte of the civil power. He wished to have the vacant see of Down for his brother, a young man without learning, only twenty-three years of age, and he had sent to Rome for the purpose. But the primate, it was known, would not consent to that nomination. Moreover, Terence Daniel, dean of Armagh, a court-favourite during the reign of Edward VI., and one of those pliant ecclesiastics with whom some of the high places in the Church were cursed at that period, was strongly recommended to the Pope by O'Neil for the archbishopric. Here was what may be called the Catholic party opposed to the new primate. Elizabeth had moreover ap