OF THE IRISH MARTYRS 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. NEW YORK: JAMES SHEEHY, PUBLISHER, 33 BARCLAY ST. 1878. 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 Ecclesiastical 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 Parnell's impartial History 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 Confessors and Martyrs, we have every reasonable hope that they have long ago secured the rest and happiness of heaven. Let us remember 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. |