CONFESSORS LIBRAR V OF CONGRESS, lelf i ®G UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. MEMOIRS IRISH MARTYRS .A* LIVES OF THE IRISH MARTY.KS AND CONFESSORS. BY MYLES O'REILLY, B.A., LL. D. WITH ADDITIONS, INCLUDING A HISTORY OF THE PENAL LAWS BY REV. RICHARD BRENNAN, A.M. M$k Cj NEW YORK: James Sheehy, Publisher, 33 Barclay St. BALTIMORE:, 74 W. Fayette St. WASHINGTON: 613 7TH St. BOSTON: 47 Hanover St. ~T8787 f/N 1> Copyright. 1878. By James Sheeht. PREFACE TO THE NEW YORK EDITION. It is almost needless to state that, for the various additions made to the New York edition of Myles O'Reilly's "Irish Martyrs and Confessors/' that talented author and gallant defender of Pius the Ninth is not responsible. Impressed with the importance of making still further known, if possible, the lives of our saintly forefathers in the faith, I have taken the liberty of adding some biographical sketches not to be found in the author's valuable collection. Among those added, will be found the lives, labors and sufferings of several heroic men, who, though they did not shed their blood for the faith, yet, by reason of their lifelong exile in foreign lands, well deserve the title of Confessors. These last have been selected. from various sources, chiefly from the "Irish Eccle- siastical Record." As a further evidence that the cruelties practised upon Irish Catholics were in accordance with the laws of Great Britain, I have also added a very complete collection of the Penal Laws, compiled from ParnelPs impartial Histoiy of those legislative enactments against the liberties and rights of our ancestors, dating from the Treaty of Limerick to the Reign of George III. Although the Church has not formally canonized these Con- fessors and Martyrs, we have every reasonable hope that they have long ago secured the rest and happiness of heaven. Let us re- member that we are closely related to those elect of heaven, that they are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh ; that we and they are members of the one great Church of God, which reaches from the recesses of purgatory to the surface of the earth, and extends aloft to the highest vaults of heaven. R. B. p •7 ISPI ^1#^^ 4 piMfcmia'i g YajJI RLK/'Sji^Jf^&S tip PREFACE The practice of preserving the records of the lives of great men, which a pagan historian declared no age, however dull, had ever neglected, comes to the Christian recommended by a deeper interest and a more pregnant use. The pagan could recommend the family and friends of the great departed only to turn from weak regrets to admiring contemplation, and suggest a timid hope that the object of their affection might continue to exist in another sphere.* Christians are told to remember that " we have a great cloud of witnesses over our head," and are called on, " laying aside every weight of sin which surrounds us, to run by patience to the fight proposed, strengthened by the example of the saints," and are reminded that "the just seem to the eyes of the foolish to die, but indeed are in peace." Hence, from the first ages of Christianity, it was looked upon as a sacred duty to preserve the memory of the lives and deaths of those who had served Christ, and who " had been deemed worthy to suffer for his name " — the memory of their deaths even more than that of their lives, because, while death to the pagan was the final end, (the limit to the labors and successes of great men,) to the Christian it was the very instrument of victor}'- — the moment of triumph : to the former, it was the termination of existence ; to the latter, it was the commencement of the real life : for the former, the cause fell with its defender ; for the latter, the triumph of the truth was secured by the death of its martyr. * Tacitus, Agricela. 6 Preface. In no country was this practice of preserving the memorials of the saints more carefully observed than in Ireland. Our earliest and most authentic records since the days of St. Patrick are the lives of our saints ; and from Jocelyn to Colgan to re- cord their deeds was a labor of love. It was a remarkable fact that, in all these collections, up to the sixteenth century one class of saints found no representatives. The Church of Ireland had produced a " glorious choir of apostles " who bore the good tid- ings to many a distant land ; the " number of her prophets who uttered praise " was not small ; but she numbered in her calen- dar no representative of "the white-robed army of martyrs." By a singular prerogative her conversion had not cost the life of a single one of her teachers, and it seemed probable that, were she left to herself, no blood of her children, shed for the faith, would ever stain her soil. But the litany of her saints was to be completed, and he who was the " Master of her apostles," the "Teacher of her evangelists," the "Purity of her virgins," was also to be the " Light of her confessors" and the " Strength of her martyrs ;" and the church, whose foundations had been laid in peace, was to see her persecution-shaken walls cemented and rebuilt with the blood of her martyrs. The sixteenth century saw in Ireland the commencement of a persecution which, gradually increasing in intensity, culminated in the middle of the seventeenth in what was probably the most exterminating attack ever endured by a Christian church. The fanatical followers of Mohammed, in the seventh century, propa- gated their faith by the sword ; but the hordes of Cromwell aban- doned the attempt to make the Irish converts, and turned all their energies to blotting out Catholicity in Ireland by the destruction of the Irish race : the Irish were recognized as ineradicably Catholic, and were slain or banished to wildernesses where it was believed they must become extinct. While this persecution was one mainly and essentially of Catholicity,* it was embittered and prolonged by every other element which could exacerbate and increase its ferocity ; the differences of race, of conquest, of * English and Scotch Catholics, settled in the north of Ireland, were as ruthlessly expelled in 1650 as those of Irish descent. See Curry's Memoirs, referred to in note on next page. Preface. 7 government, all added their elements of bitterness to intensify and prolong the strife. England had conquered Ireland, but never absorbed its iden- tity in her own ; and although she nominally ruled it, her rule up to 1600 was far from being consolidated. England became Protestant, while Ireland remained Catholic ; and hence the persecution of Catholicity in Ireland was not only the persecu- tion of the believers in one faith by the adherents of another ; it was also (as was the case in the Netherlands) the persecution of the conquered by the conquering race, of the old government by the new, of the possessors of the land of the country by those who sought to confiscate it for their own advantage. How in- finitely this has tended, for three hundred years, to prevent all impartial and good government in Ireland is patent to all. One incidental good, however, resulted from it : the fire of persecution surely but slowly fused into a common nationality all Irish Catho- lics of the various races which had so long remained separated. Norman and Celt, Palesman and " mere Irish," forgot their dif- ferences in their common Catholicity ; the laws which had sought to exclude men of Irish descent from certain posts in the church became obsolete when the honors of the church were the passport to martyrdom ; and so also the dislike of the Irish outside the pale to seeing bishops of English descent appointed to sees in their country gradually faded away before the heat of a common persecution. Dr. MacMahon, a pure Irishman, became Arch- bishop of Dublin, a see which had been occupied uninterruptedly by Englishmen since the time of St. Laurence O'Toole ; the see of Tuam was filled by Archbishops Bodkin and Skerritt; and the sainted Oliver Plunket, the "Palesman," was welcomed enthusias- tically by the Irish of Armagh. Out of the furnace of persecution there arose a new nationality for Ireland, composed of Irish Catho- lics ; whether of Irish, of English, or of Scotch descent,* it has continued to our day, and, we may hope, will endure to the end. * If my readers will glance down the list of names of those whose memorials are here given, they will see, mingled with such purely Celtic names as O'Neill, O'Conor, O'Reilly, O'Brien, those of Norman and English race, as De Burgo, Nugent, Bathe, Barry ; as Archer, English, Russell. Slingsby, Stapleton, Prendergast. Curry {Civil Wars, Appendix, p. 623) gives in- stances of Catholics of English and Scotch birth, resident in Ireland, slain for their religion. 8 Preface. And it is a nationality of which we may well be proud, and which may console us for the sad deficiencies of our secular history. The natural development of political society in Ireland was arrested at the end of the twelfth century by the English inva- sion, ere the country had been consolidated under one govern- ment,* and for some four hundred years the English did not succeed in reducing the whole island under one rule. Thus, since 1 200, Ireland, as a whole, has never had a national government f or national life ; and, since 1600, even the local Irish governments, or rules of the great chiefs, have disappeared. Thus we may say that, since 1200, we have no great consecutive national politi- cal history or national government, to the gradual development of which we can look back with pride and content ; but, on the other hand, we can trace with unalloyed satisfaction the his- tory of our church alike in tempest and in calm — her struggles in the dark and stormy ages of persecution, and her renewed youth and vigor in the serener atmosphere of our own days. Hence it is, I confess, that the history of religion in Ireland has always had peculiar charms for me ; and although I have ever felt the deepest interest in the gallant but gradually less and less successful struggles for independence of my race, I have dwelt with still deeper interest on the religious history of the same race — a history of progress and development alike in prosperity and in adversity ; a history which links the past with the present and the future : a past to which we can revert with well : grounded pride ; a present in which we recognize with grati- tude the fruit of the struggles and sufferings of our forefathers, whose example we are called on to imitate ; a future to which we may look forward with humble but well-grounded hope. To others appertains the nobler task of writing the general ecclesiastical history of Ireland ; and if we have not yet had a second Lanigan to continue the history of our church from the twelfth century, we are daily receiving valuable additions to our * The political state of Ireland in 1172 was analogous to that of England under the Hep« tarchy, and of France before Charlemagne. t Unless we except the brief rule of the Confederation of Kilkenny, from 1641 to 1647, or from 178S to 1800, when Ireland was ruled by an oligarchy, while the Catholics, the great majority of the people, were outside the pale of the constitution. Preface. 9 historical knowledge of separate portions of it from the pens of scholars like Dr. Renehan, and his able editor Dr. McCarthy, Dr. Moran, and others. I have undertaken the lesser work of collect- ing the biographies of those martyrs and confessors the tale of whose sufferings makes up so large a portion of the church history of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It may, indeed, appear strange that there has not hitherto been any complete collection of this sort. Ireland is a country where the habit of preserving local histories and biographies has flourished since before the Christian era, and from the days of St. Patrick her hagiographers collected the lives of her saints as carefully as her bards and genealogists collected the descents and the battles of her warriors. But it is a singular proof how nearly the devastation of the Cromwellian persecution annihilated the life of the Irish race that for nearly one hundred years hardly an effort was made to preserve a record of the sufferings of her sons. This is not the case with regard to the earlier and less sweeping persecu- tions under Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James. Then the custom which had been practised by the early Christians under the pagan emperors of recording the sufferings of the martyrs was imitated by the Irish, and catalogues and biographies were carefully collected by those who escaped in Ireland, or who lived in the Irish colleges abroad. Numbers of these have been lost, but we still have several, such as the Processus Mar- tyi'ialis of Doctor Roothe, published in 16 19 ; Mooney's treatise, written in 1620 ; and portions at least of others copied later by Bruodin and O'Heyn. But from 1650 the destruction was so utter, the blow so crushing, the slaughter so immense, that all idea of recording particular incidents seems to have been abandoned in despair for nearly a century f and Bruodin, who published in 1669, O'Heyn in 1706, and De Burgo still later, were the first who resumed the interrupted task. Hence there are immense de- ficiencies in the collection of the lives of our Irish martyrs ; and although I have collected as far as I could all those recorded, they can be regarded only as specimens, not as forming a com- * With the exception of the small tract, Morison's Threnodia, published at Innspruck ir 1659. iO Preface. plete enumeration, especially as regards the period from 1640 to 1680. I have undertaken to collect the biographies of those who suf- fered for the Catholic faith, not to write a contribution to the political history of Ireland ; hence the scheme of my work does not embrace the lives of those, however glorious their career, however noble the cause for which they suffered, who did not suffer directly for that faith. The same rule has been observed by those who preceded me. Thus Bruodin says : " Neminem hie no- mino in bello justissimo a Catholicis in Hibernia, pro defensione fidei, regis et patriae incepto occisum, inde eorum hie facio memoriam qui omni jure, nominari merentur inter eos qui pro Christo certando occubuere." (P. 698.)* In the case of laymen, I have thus been led to omit many who no doubt were persecuted really on account of their religion, but nominally for political reasons ; in the case of priests there is much less difficulty. Bishop Heber MacMahon indeed, who fell at the head of his troops, although one of the noblest characters of his age, is excluded by Bruodin's rule ; but priests who, al- though non-combatants, were put to death in the discharge of their sacred duties when attending the dying on the battle-field, or exceptionally slain after the surrender of towns because priests, are clearly to be enumerated as martyrs. In the great majority of cases, however, there is no question whatever : the priests and bishops were imprisoned and put to death simply on account of their religion. Although, as in England, they may have been tried for treason, the treason consisted either of " a second refusal to take the oath acknowledging the queen's su- premacy, or having a second time defended th£ supremacy of the Roman See," (5 Eliz. cap. i.,) or "obtaining any bull, or persuading any one to be reconciled to the Church of Rome," (13 Eliz. cap. ii., and 23 Eliz. cap. i., and 3 Jac. cap. iv.,) or, " having been consecrated priest abroad, entering or remaining in the kingdom, or receiving, hiding, or assisting a priest," (27 Eliz. cap. ii.) And if my readers will turn to the lives of * So also Morison : " Non recenseo hie ullum in bello occisum, quamvis fidei causa occideretur." Preface. 1 1 Archbishop O' Hurley, Archbishop Creagh, or Archbishop Plun- ket, they will see how little their deaths were due to anything save their religion. As, however, a good deal of misapprehension exists on this subject, it may be well briefly to trace the position of the Irish bishops and priests in relation to the civil govern- ment from the reign of Henry VIII. The church had never con- demned, nay, she had sanctioned the resistance of the Irish to the English invaders ; but from the time that their power became firmly established and was the only existing government within the pale, the ecclesiastics subject to their sway preached obe- dience to what was henceforth, in those districts, the only repre- sentative of authority. The case was very different in those parts of the country which preserved their independence for cen- turies later ; but, as I have before mentioned, there was not from the thirteenth century a national government exercising, or even claiming, supreme authority over the whole kingdom. In the sixteenth century the suzerainty of the English king was pretty generally acknowledged ; even the great O'Neill, although pre- serving a virtual independence, did not claim a perfectly inde- pendent sovereignty; and from the reign of Elizabeth, the sov- ereign of England was acknowledged as the only de facto ruler of Ireland. Hence bishops and priests, in pursuance of their duty of obedience to the powers that be, not only submitted them- selves, but preached the duty of submission to others. Thus Dr. Roothe under James I. wrote : " I know that the inhabitants of Ireland, the subjects of our king, are contented with the present peace, (as the subjects of the Roman empire under Augustus ;) I know how they detest the tumults of war, and desire to devote themselves to the arts of peace and enjoy its sweets ; I know they desire nothing more than the happiness of the king and his offspring, and that under their auspices may be firmly established the much-desired peace and indulgence toward the Irish, both in respect to other mat- ters and especially in those matters which regard religion, the divine worship, and the profession and practices of the ancient faith." On the accession of Charles I. the Irish acknowledged him as their legitimate king; and when his English subjects rebelled 12 Preface. against him, the Irish defended his cause with arms ; and the Catholic synod of Kilkenny in 1641, presided over by Hugh O'Reilly, Archbishop of Armagh, declared : " Whereas, the war which now in Ireland the Catholics do maintain against sectaries, and chiefly against Puritans, is for the defence of the Catholic religion, for the maintenance of the prerogative and royal rights of our gracious King Charles," and ordered the following oath to be taken by all : " I, A. B., do profess, swear, and protest, be- fore God and his angels, that I will, during my life, bear true faith and allegiance to my Sovereign Lord Charles, by the grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and to his heirs and lawful successors." The Confederates of Kilkenny, indeed, very rightly sought at the same time to secure freedom for their own religion, and the exercise of their own civil rights ; but it is essential to remember that the Confederation of Kil- kenny sought to maintain the rights of Ireland under the existing dynasty and government, (which, although alien and wrongful in its introduction, could then claim to be established by time,) not to substitute by revolution a new government for it. The scheme of making the Duke of Lorraine king of Ireland found little favor, even when Charles was wholly unable to afford that protection which is the correlative of obedience. The Irish of the middle of the seventeenth century were, indeed, called rebels, and treated as such, but it was by those who were them- selves really rebels against their legitimate sovereign, the repub- licans of England ; and the Cromwellian persecution smote them alike for their fidelity to their religion and to their king. Under Charles II., also, the Irish Catholics were faithful sub- jects ; they were only too faithful to his brother James. But from the time when the dynasty of Orange was established on the throne, it was obeyed by the Catholic priests of Ireland, whose one rule was to mix as little as might be in secular politics, and under those successive and different governments, all alike alien in their origin, to observe the apostle's precept to be subject to the powers that be. This is well stated in the synodal decrees of the province of Armagh given by Dr. Renehan :* " All priests * Renehan's Bishops, p. 118. Preface. 1 3 are to take care not to mix themselves up, either publicly or pri- vately, with affairs of state or of temporal government, nor to in- cur the enmity of the king's majesty or of the temporal governors, unless only it be by discharging their duty to God and their flocks in the administration of spirituals, leaving to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." But if they were ever ready to obey in worldly matters the various temporal rulers who governed Ireland, they were inflexi- ble in preserving their own and their people's higher spiritual allegiance to their Divine Ruler and his vicegerent on earth, and to them we owe the preservation of our noblest and most endur- ing nationality, our Catholicity. Of them it may well be said, " They took care of their nation, and delivered it from destruc- tion." Rightly may we "praise these men of renown and our fathers in their generation," for they preserved for us the faith, through such a persecution as has rarely, if ever, elsewhere been endured : " they had trials of mockeries and stripes, of bands and prisons, they were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put to death by the sword, they wandered about in sheep-skins, in goat-skins, being in want, distressed, of whom the world was not worthy. But in all these things they overcame, because of him who loved us ;" and by their sufferings has been preserved to Ireland, not only the faith, but also the spirit of fidelity and sacrifice of which they have left such glori- ous examples. The roll of those who suffered open violence for the faith closes with 1745, but not then ended the tale of those who were faithful even unto death. For one hundred years more (until 1829) did Irish Catholics submit to the privation of every worldly advantage rather than abandon their faith* " accounting all things as dross that they might gain Christ." Nay, even at a later date, when in 1847 famine and pestilence smote the land ; when " our skin was burnt as in an oven by reason of the violence of the famine ; when the tongue of the suckling child stuck to the roof of his mouth for thirst ; when the little ones asked for bread and there was none to break it to them, and they breathed out their souls on the breasts of • "Manura suam misit hostis ad omnia desiderabilia ejm. w 14 Preface. their mothers ;" when it might truly be said, " It was better with them that were slain by the sword than with them that died with hunger •" and when the generous people of England, of France, of Italy, and of every other Christian land sent abundant alms to our famishing people, there were found in some districts of Ireland men base enough to use hunger as an instrument of tor- ture to make the poor forswear their religion, who offered food and clothing as the price of apostasy, and tempted our starving peasants to barter, like Esau, their birthright of faith for a mess of pottage. And there were found hundreds, I might say thou- sands — old men, and weak women, and tender children, whose names, unrecorded here, are registered in heaven — who spurned the temptation, as their ancestors had done before them, turned fainting from the food that was the wages of sin, and purchased an eternal kingdom by a death of hunger, imitating him who " chose rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for a time," because, like him, " they looked to the reward." And others there were who, when called upon by the representatives of that alien church, which for three centuries had sought in vain to bring them into its fold, either to send their children to schools of error or to abandon the occupation of the land on which they lived, hesitated not, but left home and country and all that made life dear, and became dwellers in a strange land. Truly they remembered " that we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come ; for they that do these things signify that they seek a country and that they de- sire a better, that is to say, a heavenly country." It cannot, then, be doubtful that the brief records of those who suffered for the Catholic faith in Ireland will be welcome to their descendants ; nor will they be without interest even for strangers and members of another church. The age of strife and religious persecution is paSt : the descendants of the persecutors and the persecuted are now citizens of a common country, and can re- spect the noble deeds of all her former children. The valor and endurance of her martial sons are a subject of pride, whether dis- played in the defence of Londonderry or of Limerick, at Clontarf or Benburb. Far more does the record of undeserved sufferings heroically endured for conscience' sake claim the respect of all ; Preface. 15 to none can it be ungrateful, save to those, if any such there be, who would renew the persecutions which caused them. Of course, these memorials have a deeper interest for those who are of the household of the faith ; for the sons of those who for the faith " Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old ;" for those who now fill the posts in the church once occupied by martyrs. To them, and to their predecessors, may I apply the words addressed after the French Revolution to the glorious clergy of France : " Hail, venerable priests of the Roman Catholic Church ! You have, indeed, suffered much, but you have not yet come to the city of the living God and the company of the angels, where the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has glorified those whom he called in persecution and justified by the shedding of blood for the faith. Let us strew a few flowers on the tombs of our martyrs. Hail, you who were mighty in war, and fought with the old ser- pent ! O glorious confessors of our God and his Christ ! to whom it was given not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him — you who endured so much ignominy, who as exiles trod the narrow way of the cross amidst the applause of heaven and the wonder of the earth, behold me at your feet ! How beauti- ful are the feet of those who were witnesses to God even unto the ends of the earth ! And you who, contemning the tempest and the swelling waves, ceased not intrepidly to cast your nets ; you who, placed, as it were, in the fiery furnace, continued to bless God, to do good to men, to guard your flocks ; you, burning and shining lights, who, when you might no longer be as a light placed on a candlestick to shine to all in the house, sought to gather as many as you might under the bushel where you were hidden, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings — sacred leaven which preserved the whole body from perversion 1 — you blessed priests, to whom the Lord gave the spirit of heroic endurance in the midst of dangers — hail, true soldiers of Christ! Hail, holy priests, worthy of double honor ! Praise be to God 1 6 Preface, who gave to you this victory, through Christ our Lord ! Happy persecution which brought you such a reward ! Happy prisons through which you reached the heavenly palaces ! Happy death which gave you eternal life ! Holy fathers, glorious brothers, who now joyfully stand around the throne of the Lamb, look down from heaven, and bring help to your brethren, your flocks, your countrymen. We are still in the strife, while you have atta ined the happy rest. Aid us by your prayers."* * Arvisenet, Manual. Sacen INDEX OF PRINCIPAL WORKS REFERRED TO. I have thought that some of my younger readers would like to have a short account of the principal works of old authors here quoted, with a note of where they may be found. I may here point out that the plan I have observed is to give wherever possible the " Memorials" in the exact words of the original writers from whom they are derived. This plan has the advantage not only of enabling the reader to judge for himself, but of presenting a more lively and truthful picture than any modern reswne could give : it tells the reader not only the facts, but how those facts affected contemporaries, and how they judged them, and thus furnishes a lively picture of the times — a record not only of the actions, but of the thoughts and feelings of the men of those days. I need hardly point out that the language of those old writers is not always that which we should use : thus, they designate as sectaries and heretics those whom we are accustomed to call " our dissenting brethren ;" but it would be absurd to make those who were fleeing into the wilderness before the exterminating sword of the Cromwellians speak of them as "erring brethren." Time heals wounds and obliterates animosities. I have let the men of old speak their own thoughts in their own language, as we do ours. Annates Ordinis Minorum. Auctore Luca Waddingo. Romas, 1731. Wadding's well- known annals of his own order. This work is to be found in all our great libraries, as the British Museum, Trinity College, Maynooth College, etc. Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, quibus accessit syllabus eorum qui ex eodem ordiiie pro fide Christi fortiter occubuerunt. Romae, 1806. This is the revised and continued edition, by Thisboralea, of the work by Wadding. It is in Trinity College, etc. Acta Sanctorum. Colgan. Lovanii, 1645. The preface gives an account of the death of Fathers Fleming and Ward, two of the compilers. It is in the British Museum, Trinity Col- lege, etc. Hibernia Doininicana. De Burgo. Col Agrippinse, 1762. This well-known work is in all our public and many of our private libraries. 1 8 Index of Principal Works referred to. Monumenta Dominicana. Fonseca. Romse, 1665. This is not an uncommon work ; I have myself a copy. Historice Catholicce Compendium. Auctore O'Sullevano Bearro. Ulissiponi, 1621. The original is in the British Museum, Trinity College, etc. The reprint of 185c is to be had easily. Relatio Persecutionis Hibernice. Auctore Dominico a Rosario, (O'Daly.) And Hist. Gerald. Ulissip. 1655. Is in the British Museum, Trinity Library, etc. A translation of it by Father Meehan was published by Duffy in 1847. Propugnaculum Catholicce Veritatis, etc. Auctore R. P. F. Antonio Bruodino. Pragse, 1669. Is in Maynooth Library. De Regno Hibernice. A Petro Lombardo. Lovanii, 1632. Is in the British Museum, etc. Lyra sive Anacephalosis Hibern. Auctore T. Carve. Sulzbaci, 1666. Is in the British Museum, etc. Relatio Viridica Provincice Hibernice Ordinis Minorum. Auctore R. P. le Marchant, 165 1. I have seen this very curious account of the Franciscan province of Ireland at that time only in the Bollandists' Library, Brussels. A nalecta Sacra Nova et Mira de Rebus Catholicorum in Hibernia pro Fide et Religi- one gestis. Auctore N. Philadelpho, (Dr. David Roothe, Bishop of Ossory.) Colonise, 1617. And Processus Martyrialis, etc., by the same author. The first printed in 1617, the second in 1619. The first is a general account of the history of the time ; the second contains a cata- logue and lives of those who up to that date had suffered for the faith. The first exists in the Bollandists', Louvain, and Antwerp libraries, and a copy is in the possession of his eminence Cardinal Cullen. Of the second I only know three copies, one in the Bollandists' Library, one in the library of Louvain University, and the third in MS. in my possession, for which I am indebted to the kindness of the Rev. T. O'Hea. Societas Jesu usque ad Sanguinem, etc. Tanner. Pragae, 1675. This volume of lives of the Jesuits of these countries who suffered for the faith is to be found in the British Mu- seum and some of cur other libraries. Collections toward Illustrating the Biography of Members of the Society of Jesus. Exe ter, 1838. By Dr. Oliver. This work is to be found in most libraries. Persecutio Hibernice. By the Irish Seminary of Seville. Printed 1619. I am indebted for my knowledge of this work, which is in the library of St. Isidore's, Rome, to Dr. Moran. Sanctorale Cisterciensum. Valladolid, 1613. For references to this, which is to be found in the private library of Propaganda, Rome, I am also indebted to Dr. Moran. Historical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland. Curry. Dublin, 1775. Is in all our libraries. Noticias Historicas de las tres Florentissimas Provincias del Celeste Orden de la Sma. Trinidad. A Fr. Domingo Lopez, etc. Madrid, 1714. This curious but, I fear, apocry- phal work is to be found in the library of Maynooth College, and in the private library of Propaganda. Theologia Tripartita. Ardsdekin. Antverpiae, 1686. At the end is an account of Dr. Talbot, Dr. Plunket, and some others. It is a common book, and in all our libraries. Pii A ntistitis Icon, sive de Vita et Morte Reverendi D. Francisci Kirwan, A lladensis Episcopi. Authore loanne Lynchaeo, Archidiacono Tuamensi. Maclovii, 1649. The copy in the Grenville Library, in the British Museum, is the only one known to exist. On the fly- leaf is written by R. Heber, to whom the book belonged: "I believe this to be the rarest Ma?iuscripts in the Burgundian Library. 19 volume in existence connected with the history of Ireland, and the portrait of Bishop Kirwan prefixed is totally unknown." The biographer, John Lynch, titular Archdeacon of Tuam fled out of Ireland into France after the surrender of Galway to Cromwell, and is the author of the scarce and well-known work, Cambrensis Eversiis. A translation by Father Meehan was printed by Duffy in 1848. Epilogus Chro7tologice exponens succinate convenlus et fundationes Sacri Ordinis Pre- dicatorum in Regno Hibernice. Lovanii, 1706. Fr. Ioanne O'Heyn, O.P. It gives a very short account of each convent, and its most remarkable alumni. The book is scarce ; the only copy I know of in Ireland is in the library of the Dominican convent, Galway. Threnodia Hiherno Catholica, sive Planctus Universalis Totius Cleri et Populi Regn Hibernice. Per F. M. Morisonum, Ord. Min. Strict Obs. CEniponti, 1659. Exists in the Grenville Library, British Museum. I do not know of any other copy. I need hardly mention here, as they are so well known : Dr. Renehan's Collections on Church History, edited by Rev. D. McCarthy. Dublin, 1861. Dr. Moran's Lives of Archbislwps of Dublin ; Life of Dr. Plunket ; History of Perse- cutions, etc. Father Meehan's valuable translation of C Sullivan Lynch and Others, and his last work, Flight of the Earls. Father Cogan's Diocese of Meath. The various calendars of State Papers published by the Record Office. MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BURGUNDIAN LIBRARY, BRUSSELS. No. 2307. A Catalogue of tJte Martyrs, etc., of the Society of Jesus, quoted as Catalog. Soc. Jesu. It is a catalogue of all those of the society who had recently (about 1700) suffered for the faith. No. 2159. Magna Supplicia a Persecutorihus aliquot Catholicorum in Ibernia Sumpta. Written about 1600. A very curious collection of contemporary anecdotes. No. 2167. Compendium Martyrii Reveretidi Cornelii O'Dovanii. An account of the martyrdom of Bishop Dovany in 1612, written by a contemporary. Bound up with the same is a curious letter, dated 15th April, 1612, from the Rev. Father Fleming, of the Order of St. Dominick, dated from the convent of Dundalk. This is curious as showing that at that date the Dominican convent of Carlingford had been transferred to Dundalk. No. 3195. De Provincia Hibernice Ordinis Sancti Francisci Tractatus a Rev. Do* • tuito Mooftey. Anno 1627. This account of the Franciscan province of Ireland has been frequently referred to, and a good part of it published in Duffy's Magazute by Father Meehan. No. 3824. Lettres des Jesuites A nglais, or Correspondance des Peres Jesuites Irlandait. This is the collection of letters from Irish Jesuits and others, giving the life of Henry Slingsby, which my readers will find under the year 1641. MARTYRS AND CONFESSORS, Anno IS 30. It has frequently been remarked as extraordinary that the early annals of the Irish Church did not record a sin- gle martyr : such was the gentleness and docility of the pagans of Ireland of the time of St. Patrick that their con- version was effected without provoking any violence or the death of a single missionary. But the history of the Irish Church was not to be peaceable to the end. Heresy smote where paganism had spared, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the Church of Ireland purpled in the blood of her martyrs. King Henry VIII., having plunged England into the guilt of heresy and schism, resolved to make Ireland a sharer in the same fate. Accordingly, the death of Archbishop Allen, in 1534, having caused a vacancy in the see of Dublin, Henry ap- pointed, in March, 1535, Doctor George Browne, an Eng- lish Augustinian friar, to the vacant bishopric ; and, without any confirmation from Rome, he was consecrated by Cran- mer, and received from him, in compliance with the schis- 22 Martyrs and Confessors matical act lately passed in the English Parliament, the pallium and other insignia of his dignity. This schismatical intruder into the see of Dublin found a zealous coadjutor in the then Bishop of Meath, Doctor Edward Staples, an Englishman, who had been appointed to the see of Meath,* in 1530, by Pope Clement VI L, at the request of Henry VIII. By their advice, a Parliament was convened in 1536, which, after the spiritual proctors had been illegally deprived of the right of voting, and great menaces on the part of the king had been used, at length passed an act vesting the supremacy of the church in the king. As Henry was thus proclaimed head of the church, it was deemed necessary to secure him a tribute from the ecclesiastical property. Hence an act was passed giving him the first-fruits of every benefice and the twentieth part of the profits of all spiritual benefices. The same Parliament, which thus, at the dictation of the king, waged war against our faith, also waged war against our national usages, and even against our existence as a people. Thus we find one act passed for encouraging "the English order, habit, and language," while it pre- scribed that spiritual preferment should be given " only to such as could speak English, unless, after four proclamations in the next market-town, such could not be found." Should any Irishman perchance be promoted to any benefice, there was an oath imposed, " that he would endeavor to learn and teach the English tongue, to all and every being un- der his rule, and to bid the beads in the English tongue, and preach the word of God in English, if he can preach." These legislators evidently believed it impossible to make the Irish embrace heresy unless they could make them * Staples really was Bishop of Meath, having been duly appointed and consecrated, al- though he afterward apostatized ; but Browne never was Archbishop of Dublin, never hav- ing been lawfully elected or consecrated. He was, as he himself said, " made {archbishop) by the king-." See his letter quoted in Dr. Moran's A rchbishops of Dublin, p. 4- In the Reign of Henry VIII. 23 cease to be Irish.* But it was one thing to have laws passed by a timorous Parliament, it was another to enforce their observance. In a large part of Ireland, inhabited by the original Irish, the authority of Parliament was little re- spected, and even in the pale the clergy and people ap- pear to have very little regarded the parliamentary decrees which transferred the supremacy from the pope to the king. Except Browne and Staples, no bishops appear to have leaned toward the new opinions, as they were call- ed ; and in 1538 we find Browne writing to Cromwell that not even in the diocese of Dublin "can I persuade or in- duce onye, either religious or secular, sithens my comyng over, ons to preach e the word of God, or the just title of our moste illustrious prince." f But the most urgent de- sire of Henry was not the change of the religious opinions of the people, but the plunder of the wealth of the church. In 1536, the first grant of religious houses was made to the king by the authority of the Irish Parliament. This grant comprised three hundred and seventy monasteries. In the following year, by virtue of a commission under the Great Seal of England, eight abbeys were suppressed, and in 1538 a further order was issued for the suppression of all the monasteries and abbeys. In some cases the superiors of these religious houses surrendered without opposition the charge entrusted unto them, but whenever they could not be induced by threats or promises to resign their mo- nasteries to the crown, severer measures were resorted to ; and one instance is especially recorded of Manus O'Fihily, the last Abbot of St. Mary's, Thurles, who, on a refusal to comply with the wishes of the crown, was car- ried a prisoner to Dublin, and subjected to a long and painful imprisonment.^ I cannot better describe the persecution of the Catho- * See Dr. Moran, chap. i. t Diocese of Meath, p. 90. + Grose's Irish Antiquities, ii. 85, quoted by Dr. Moran. 24 Martyrs and Confessors lies than in the words of the Four Masters (ad an. 1537) : "A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical speculations, so that the people of England went into op- position to the pope and to Rome. At the same time they followed a variety of opinions, and adopting the old law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish people, they gave the title of head of the church of God, during his reign, to the king. There were enacted by the king and council new laws and statute's after their own will. They ruined the orders who were permitted to hold worldly pos- sessions, namely, monks, canons regular, nuns, and Breth- ren of the Cross ; and also the four mendicant orders — the Franciscans, the Preachers, the Carmelites, and the Augus- tinians. The possessions and livings of all these were taken up for the king. They broke into the monasteries ; they sold their roofs and bells, so there was not a monas- tery from Arann of the Saints to the Iccian Sea that was not broken and scattered, except only a few in Ireland, which escaped the notice and attention of the English. They further burned and broke the famous images, shrines, and relics of Ireland and England. After that they burn- ed, in like manner, the celebrated image of Mary, which was at Ath-Trium, which used to perform wonders and miracles, and at which were healed the blind, the deaf, the lame, and the sufferers from all diseases ; and the staff of Jesus, which was in Dublin, performing miracles from the days of St. Patrick down to that time, and which was in the hands of Christ while he was among men. They also made archbishops and bishops for themselves, and, al- though great was the persecution of the Roman emperors against the church, it is not probable that so great a per- secution as this ever came upon the world ; so it is impos- sible to tell or narrate its description, unless it shou d be In the Reign of Henry VIII. 2$ told by him who saw it." Under the year 1540, we shall meet with a particular instance, recorded by the same an- nalist, of the martyrdom of some of their own order. Anno 1539. The Spanish writer Lopez gives, under this year and 1545, the martyrdom of a large number of Trinitarian fa- thers, but, as there is great doubt as to the accuracy of those accounts in Lopez, I shall not here insert them. Anno 1540. FRANCISCAN FATHERS OF THE MONASTERY OF MONAGHAN. " The English, in every place throughout Ireland where they established their power, persecuted and banished the nine religious orders, and particularly they destroyed the monastery of Monaghan, and beheaded the guardian and a number of the friars." — Annals of Four Masters, at this year. Anno 1560. WILLIAM WALSH, BISHOP OF MEATH, CONFESSOR. During the reign of Henry VIII., Meath had been dis- graced by an apostate bishop. Dr. Edward Staples, an Englishman, had been appointed, in 1530, at the request of Henry VIIL, Bishop of Meath. As to the early years of his episcopate little is known. In 1534, he fled to England, in order to escape the anger of Silken Thomas, then in rebellion, to whom he had made himself obnoxious. In 1535, he returned to the diocese of Meath, deeply infected with the principles of the Reformation ; and from that time 26 Martyrs and Confessors he was a willing assistant of Dr. Browne, the intruder into the see of Dublin, in the work of despoiling the monasteries and endeavoring to force the new heresy on the Irish people. Mary ascended the throne in 1553, and in April, 1554, Dr. Dowdall, Archbishop of Armagh, lately returned from banishment, and Dr. William Walsh, received a com- mission to proceed against immoral ecclesiastics, and to depose such as were married and impenitent. By their authority, Edward Staples was, in June of the same year, removed from the diocese of Meath, deprived of his bene- fice, and suspended from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and this Dr. William Walsh was afterward duly appointed Bishop of Meath. Sir James Ware says that he was a native of Waterford ; but another authority, who certainly had better opportu- nities of information, namely, John alias Malachy Hortrey, a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of Holy Cross, in a manu- script treatise entitled De Cistertiensiicm Hibemorum Viris Illustribus, states that William Walsh was born at Dunboyne, county Meath, joined the Cistercian order, and lived in the Abbey of Bective, previous to its suppression. Whatever doubt there may be about the place of his birth and his early history, there is none whatever as to his eminent virtues, distinguished abilities, and the heroic fortitude with which he bore numerous and prolonged sufferings for the faith. His unbending orthodoxy and opposition to the innovations of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. marked him out for promotion after the accession of Mary, and accordingly we find him associated with the zealous primate, Dr. Dowdall, in the commission to drive from the sanctuary all such as were faithless to their trust. A conge d 'elire was issued to the Archdeacon and clergy of Meath for the election of Dr. Walsh, and, after having received the royal assent and the confirmation of the Holy In the Reign of Elizabeth. 27 See, he addressed the following petition to Mary and Philip : " Petition of William Walsh, stating that he was elected bishop by the chapter and clergy of the bishopric of Meath, and had for his consecration their graces' letters-patent ; but, not having his lawful consecration from the Universal Catholic Church, like other bishops, he could not, with good conscience, be consecrated ; and stating that he was sent into Ireland at his own cost, by commission, to deprive certain married bishops and priests, and was so occupied in execution of this office that he could not attend to his consecration. He therefore prays a grant of the tem- poralities of the see from the date of the deprivation of the late incumbent, which was the feast of Saints Peter and Paul last past." On the receipt of this petition the king and queen wrote to the Lord Deputy, the Chancellor, and the Coun- cil of Ireland, thus : " We send you herein enclosed a supplication exhibited to us by our loving subject, Dr. Walsh, Bishop of Meath elect. He desires the temporalities of the bishopric from the time of the deprivation of the late incumbent. Our pleasure is that you shall give order to make forth an utterlemagne, under our Great Seal, whereby he may enjoy the whole temporalities of the bishopric from the time of the amotion or deprivation of the late incumbent." — Oct. 1 8th, 1st and 2d Ma?y and Philip. Dr. Walsh was consecrated about the close of 1554, and immediately applied himself with zeal and energy to reform abuses, and to heal the wounds which during the last two reigns had been inflicted on faith, morals, and discipline. The period of his usefulness was, however, destined to be brief, and he had time merely to stimulate his priests and to fortify his diocese when the gathering storm burst over the Irish Church, and sacrificed the Bishop of Meath 28 Martyrs and Confessors among its first and noblest victims. Queen Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, who at once publicly embraced the reformed tenets, and proceeded to have them enforced on all. In 1560, an act was passed, under the deputyship of the Earl of Suffolk, which ordered all ecclesiastical persons, judges, officers, justices, mayors, and all the other queen's officers, to take the oath of supremacy under penalty of forfeiture, and also enacted that if any person should, by writing, printing, teaching, preaching, by express words, deed, or act, maintain any foreign spiritual jurisdiction, he should for the first offence forfeit all his goods and suffer one year's imprisonment, for the second offence should incur the penalty of prae- munire, and for the third be deemed guilty of high treason. {2d Eliz. cap. i.) It was now the fidelity of Dr. Walsh was tested to the utmost. Had he, like a few of his contemporaries, sacrific- ed conscience to expediency, worldly comfort and ephe- meral honor were soon to have been his portion. But he felt he had a higher authority to obey than Queen Eliza- beth, and hence he repudiated her pretensions to rule the church, and guarded his flock, even at the peril of his life, against her parliamentary creed. Ware thus narrates the event : " After the return of the Earl of Sussex to Ireland, let- ters came from her majesty signifying her pleasure for a general meeting of the clergy of Ireland, and the estab- lishment of the Protestant religion through the several dioceses of this kingdom. Among the bishops, the Bishop of Meath was very zealous for the Romish Church ; not content with what offers her majesty had proposed, but very much enraged, (after the assembly had dispersed themselves,) he fell to preach against the Common Prayer in his diocese at Trim, which was newly come over and ordered to be observed, for which the lord lieutenant In the Reign of Elizabeth. 29 confined him till he acquainted her majesty with it, who sent over her orders to clap him up in prison. Within a few months after, persisting in the same mind, he was deposed, and the bishopric of Meath was about two years vacant, till, by her majesty's provision, Hugh Brady became Walsh's successor."* On the 1 6th of July, 1565, Adam Loftus, Protestant Archbishop of Armagh, writes to Sir William Cecil : " The Xlllth of this monthe by vertu of our commission for cawsis ecclesiastycall, we committed to the castell of Dublyn, doctor Welcke, late byssippe of Methe, there to remayne untill the queenes majesties pleasure were knowne. He refused the othe and to answer such articles as we required of him ; and besides that, ever sithens the last parliament, he hath manifestly contemned and openly showed himself to be a mislyker of all the queenes ma- jesties proceedings ; he openly protested before all the people the same day he was before us, that he would never communicate or be present (by his will) where the service should be ministrid, for it was against his conscience and (as he thought) against God's woord. If it shall seeme good to your honour and the rest of her majesties most honourable counseyle, in myne opinion, it wer fit he showld be sent to England, and peradventure by conferringe with the lerned bishoppes there, he might be brought to sum conformitie ; he is one of great creadit amongst his coun- trimen, and uppon whome (as tutchinge cawsis of re- ligion) thay wholy depend."! As no pretext could be devised for leading him to the scaffold, he once more received the culprit's chains, (he bore * Ware's A nnah, 1560. I need hardly say it was only the temporalities of the see of Meath which were given to Brady. William Walsh continued lawful Bishop of Meath till his death. t All his biographers agree that Dr. Walsh passed between twelve and thirteen years in prison ; and he escaped about Christmas, 1572. He would therefore appear to have been im- prisoned a first time in 1560, and more definitely consigned to prison in 1565. See Henri' quez and his Epitaph a£. Moran and Cogaru 3