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DR. JOHN RIDER,

PROTESTANT BISHOP OF KILLALOE (FROM 1612 TO 1632),

ONE OF THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND.

DR. RIDER was a native of Wigan, a Master of Arts of

Oxford, Parish Minister of Bermondsey, compiler of a poor Latin Dictionary, Rector of the rich Church of Winwick, Dean of St. Patrick's, writer of some controversial books, Archdeacon of Meath, and "Bishop of Killaloe"

"A ravenous pastor of the British breed,

Who came to fleece the flock and not to feed."

This is the sum of what is found in "Ware's Bishops," and Mason's "History of St. Patrick's," to which we have taken the liberty of tacking on an elegant extract from Rider's most celebrated successor, Dean Swift. We now subjoin some interesting and edifying details from the vigorous pen of FitzSimon.

"Rider begs 'all the priests and Jesuits in the country to tell me that he would not digest my omissions to answer his objections.' I have answered them abundantly and so little to his appetite, that I warrant you he had rather swallow down his old sustenance, the gruel of Wigan, newly from the fire, than have his stomach charged therewith. For were he an ostrich that could digest iron and steel, yet the matter now requested to his digestion is made such an ingredient or drug, so vehemently working on the stomach, that it will burst his midriffe and burn his bowels if it be not instantly quit by purge or surfeit."2

"He falsely boasts that he has sifted my answer and proved it to be bran.' This saying is in part borrowed and in part natural. It is borrowed from Martin Mar-Prelate. It is natural, as Rider's father was a miller and himself a baker."

"You call crosses and Agnus Deis 'trash;' more beseeming had it been for you all your life in Wigan to have patched old 'trashes,' as they call slippers, than to blaspheme such godly things, which the ancient belief of Christians had in such veneration. Alas! by such men the cross is in Ireland hanged in derision, trampled under foot in disdain, scornfully broken and sacrilegiously burned-O cæcas hæreticorum mentes!"4

"Now mark how illogical Mr. Rider is! From this argument of his it would follow, that because a son cannot despise his mother he may marry her! Who would not pity Rider's 1 See Sketch of Father Fitz Simon, RECORD of October, 1872.

"Replie," p. 38. 3" Replie,” p. 23. 4 FitzSimon on the "Masse."

father if he had been at any charges (as he was not able) for his son's bringing up."

"His master at Oxford, Sabinus Chamber, who is at this time my dear brother, doth testify to Rider's foul imbecility :

"Mr. John Rider came to me to Oxford about the beginning of Lent, as I remember, in the year 1581, recommended by my aunt, by whom he was then maintained. He remained there till the Act, which is celebrated always in summer, ordinarily after the 14th of July. In one and the same year he passed Bachelor and Master of Arts, by means of I know not what juggling and perjury. I never had any scholar more indocile and unskilful. Before his answering I must have instructed him in all that I would oppose, and yet the next day he was never the wiser. The kind offices that my aunt and I did him, if he deny, he must be profoundly impudent.

"This I testify under my hand, at Luxemburg, this 24th of December, 1604.'2

"Mr. Chamber has told me that although he took, in New Park, great pains with him, at the request of two of his own aunts by whom he was relieved, yet he never could make entrance for Rider's head into philosophy, nor for philosophy into his head.

"This aforesaid gentleman is at this hour in place and account of great trust, who, to be better believed, has added this secret token, that Rider, contrary to the laws of the University, proceeded Master in the self-same year of his Bachelorship, not without perjury in his witnesses."

"Oh, rich Deanery of St. Patrick, how wouldst thou groan if thou didst feel the heft of the divinity of thy Dean!

"No wonder, then, he never minds my arguments, but is, like the cuckoo, always repeating the same song over and over again. And for all his repetitions I must say to him, as a gentleman said to a piper that eftsoons reiterated the same tune, he having once given him fourpence-Friend, vary thy note, if thou wilt have me increase my grote.'

"However, when he does vary, he does so with a vengeance. As weak bed-ridden people never remain quiet, but turn from side to side, seeking repose, he diverteth from matter to matter, to depester and quiet his diseased and crazed cause and conscience, never remaining on the point in controversy." If our late queen, Elizabeth, industrious in giving names, termed an abrupt jumping dance 'frog-gaillard,' how would she have named Rider's reasoning?

66

Against men of that stamp it is idle to write, and espe

cially for me, as few could be better employed than I, and few are more desirous to be well employed. The Psillians tormented by south winds took arms against them-such was my folly when I encountered a bag-pipe and a sack of wind not the sweetest. Not merely does he not follow my arguments, but he does not attend to my assertions, and attributes to me opinions which I hold not, and then runs after falsehood in me as a cat runs after his own tail. O Muses, what stepmothers you have been to Mr. Rider!

"To all his railing at me I only say, as Titus Tacitus said to Metellus-It is easy to reproach me, whereas I am not to reply. You have learned to revile; I, having testimony from my conscience, have learned to contemn your railing, and as you are lord of your tongue, so am I of my ears.' He reproaches me with being 'brought up in the brazenfaced colleges of the Jesuits, etc.' This is spoken by a man, either brought up in Brazen-nose College of Oxford, wherein his countrymen are only trained; or, at least, which to all men is known, if not often brought up, thrust down in the iron-faced counters of London, for debts and cheating. What think you, would not another beside a Jesuit, having such evident advantages over him, interchange some quips with him? But one brought up in the Jesuits' Colleges, wherein the greatest number of princes in Christendom is brought up, cannot esteem a minister lately, beside all other infamies, by public court condemned for a simoniacal cozener, in selling one and the same benefice, as Beza did his priory, to two or three different persons, to be an equal copesmate for him to contend with for bringing up.'

"In spite of his training at Brazen-nose, he translates quae lingua, "which tongue," as "whose tongues ;" and what a learned reader and dictionary maker we have in him, who was not able to find out the word Transubstantiation in John Huss! He meddles in grammar, and talks of the active and passive voice. Unfortunately this active and passive gloss is produced by him against himself, claiming to have him by all Protestants careful of their honour, sued to be a deponent."s

"Mr. Rider often bids us read these and those in Greek; gentle reader, for ostentation he biddeth us to do what he cannot do himself. For in my particular knowledge and experience, a blind man hath as much sight in his eyes as he hath good Greek in his head. I told you, Mr. Rider, that you would carry your empty pitcher so oft to the Greek stream 1 Valer. Max. 1. 7. Replie." 3" Confutation," pp. 173, 174. 4" Confutation,” p. 81.

that it would come home broken. What! did Christ speak Greek? In what Greeking will all scholars think your head to have been?

"I have three causes not to justify our Latin translation compared with the Greek against Mr. Rider. The first is, that there is not a more naked linguist in the country, or more unfit proctor for the Greek tongue, as is shown by his ignorant meddling in such matters. It was his chance during my being in prison, in the presence of Alderman Janns, the Constable, and others, to have presented a trial of his skill in Greek about the words of the Angel to our Blessed Ladie. I confess that my study was much more in other matters than in the Greek tongue; yet, as the above-named are witnesses, I found Mr. Rider not only tripping in Greek, but mute from ever after mentioning Greek in my presence.1

Of

"What needeth this moth to intermeddle with the candle of learning, whereby his wings are so often scorched?2 By God's good providence he has been reprobated to confusion in all matter and sciences whereof he hath made any mention. his ignorance in Scripture, in the Fathers, in History, in Orthography, in Greek, in French, in Latin, in English, and now in spelling, against my will, he would needs convict himself ignorant. He writes 'scilence,' 'scholler,' which never scholar. would have done; also 'circumscision,' and 'Lattin. But of his palpable ignorance in Latin hereafter.3

"Doth Mr. Rider understand any hard Latin? Of his skill. in Greek, whereby he affirmed Christ to have spoken Greek, as if Greek and Hebrew were all one, as his knowledge in them both is all one, we have already treated. His skill also in Scriptures, Councils, Ancient Fathers, Scholastics, Histories, Grammar, and Orthography is not obscurely notified. At least, he that glories in his grammarian labours, he that made the Latin Dictionary, into which he introduced nothing new but ridiculous words-is he ignorant of Latin? This figurative Latin locution is beyond your capacity. Before you betake yourself to new grammarian labours and dictionary inventions, learn to understand a plain Latin metaphor, that your denials thereof, because it is not in plain dunstable terms, be not reputed, if not profoundly impudent, yet profoundly ignorant. In your first sermon in Dublin you five times accented as long the short 'i' of sculptile, and you said templum Fanum instead of templum Jani. Whereupon the Lord Chancellor rebuked your audacious temerity in meddling in that papistical language. Why then would you wade further in so unfortunate a ford, wherein 1 "Confutation," p. 186. 2 "Confutation," p. 211. 3 "Confutation," p. 311.

VOL. IX.

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you had been so publicly overplunged? But as by your name Rider, you are a cavaliero and adventurous, I will instruct yourself, and others (who perhaps will be therefor more thankful) of some few as great slips and trips of ignorance in Latin, testified in this your discourse, as would wrest shame out of impudence itself." Here FitzSimon gives half a dozen slips, and refers to others noticed previously, and then says he deals favourably "in not riding Mr. Rider more vehemently on this point." "One that fails to be a physician might perchance not be an ignorant musician, or, not being a gardener, might yet be a horse-courser. So in degrees of learning, he that cannot write might yet, perhaps, indite well; he that is no rhetorician might yet be a grammarian; he that is no poet might yet be a linguist; he that is no divine might yet be antiquarist or chronicler. But to fail in all degrees and sciences, without knowing any one faculty soundly, and yet to profess a general skill universally, and to possess such a Deanery entirely, sheweth the Muses to be stepmothers to his constitution, himself to have lost great time in following some other more convenient profession, and Church livings to have run clean out of their wonted channel-as soon to a dunce as a doctor."2

"Mr. Rider complains that my preface is biting. Yes, so every breath is to a scabbed head, and touch to a boil. He taketh upon himself to talk doctrinally on the Sacrifice of the Mass, but is ignorant therein, and in God's book and sound divinitie. Not knowing so much as the first priesthood, his reading must have been careless or none at all. The name of priest is no more proper to him than to every believing Christian; yet he wresteth from his Deanery, as being a priest, as I have been credibly informed, seventeen hundred of corn to which he is no more entitled than others. The name of minister he may wear, as, when without addition, it is taken in evil part in the Bible."

Having given a sketch of Rider's education, FitzSimon enters into some details regarding his faith and morals, from which it would appear

"That his religion it was fit

To match his learning and his wit;

'Twas Presbyterian true blue,
For he was of that stubborn crew.
Who prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Compound for sins they are inclined to

By damning those they have no mind to."

That these words of Hudibras were true of Rider we have seen already, and we shall perceive it more clearly "Confutation," p. 368. 2 "Confutation," p. 96.