MARTYRS AND CONFESSORS.

Anno 1530.

It has frequently been remarked as extraordinary that the early annals of the Irish Church did not record a single martyr: such was the gentleness and docility of the pagans of Ireland of the time of St. Patrick that their conversion 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 appointed, in March, 1535, Doctor George Browne, an English Augustinian friar, to the vacant bishopric; and, without any confirmation from Rome, he was consecrated by Cranmer, and received from him, in compliance with the schis

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 VII., 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 prescribed 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 under 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, although he afterward apostatized; but Browne never was Archbishop of Dublin, never having been lawfully elected or consecrated. He was, as he himself said, “made (archbishop) by the king." See his letter quoted in Dr. Moran's Archbishops of Dublin, p. 4.

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 respected, and even in the pale the clergy and people appear 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 called; and in 1538 we find Browne writing to Cromwell that not even in the diocese of Dublin "can I persuade or induce onye, either religious or secular, sithens my comyng over, ons to preache the word of God, or the just title of our moste illustrious prince."† But the most urgent desire 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 monasteries 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 carried 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.

↑ Diocese of Meath, p. 90. + Grose's Irish Antiquities, ii. 85, quoted by Dr. Moran.

lics 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 opposition 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 statutes after their own will. They ruined the orders who were permitted to hold worldly possessions, namely, monks, canons regular, nuns, and Brethren of the Cross; and also the four mendicant orders-the Franciscans, the Preachers, the Carmelites, and the Augustinians. 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 monastery 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 burned, 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, although great was the persecution of the Roman emperors against the church, it is not probable that so great a persecution as this ever came upon the world; so it is impossible to tell or narrate its description, unless it shoud be