[... H]e lived secluded from the turmoil of civil strife, in the old castle of Ruaidhri O’Conchobhair, last King of Ireland. on principle, he was opposed to the active interference of the clergy in the critical politics of his time. He even maintained that such interference had been always, in every country, productive of evil; an opinion more in accordance with his own quiet temper and studious habits than with the history of Christian states. But, whatever were his motives, he does not appear as a public character in any of the voluminous contemporary documents on the wars and deliberations of the Irish Catholics from 1641 to 1652.
 Yet he held decided opinions on the political questions which distracted the councils and paralysed the strength of the Irish Catholics, and at last made them helpless victims of the English regicides. Born in the loyal town of Galway, grand-nephew of one of those priests, who, in Galway, as elsewhere, preached political submission to Elizabeth, while his countrymen were in the field against her, - he could not approve the rising of the Ulster Irish, nor the peretensions of any party irreconcilable with loyalty to the King of England. His own brief experience had taught him to hope for the gradual and peaceful triumph over the privileges of creed and race. From the clsoe of the reign of James I, persecution on the score of religion had relaxed; the Catholic religion had been embraced by the some of the most distinguished families planted under Elizabeth; the old Anglo-Irish familes - the Butlers, the Burkes, Nugents, and Fitzgeralds - still died in that religion, though the heads of those families sometimes temporised during life; the strong arm of Wentworth had compressed all the jarring elements of Irish society into something like unity, and consequently mutual toleration; the animosities of Anglo-Irish and mere Irish clergy were dying away; a “Peaceful Association” [ftn. founded in 1620 by David Rothe, Bishop of Ossory - Messingham, p.87] combined their energies for the common [vi] good; and the prejudices of some of the most intolerant of the ascendant party were gradually yielding before the softening influence of common literary tastes. Everythign promised the speedy adjustment of conflicting pretensions. That fond dream - the union of Irishmen on grounds of perfect equality in every respect, religious and political, for the national good - should soon become a reality. These were the views of Dr. Lynch, the hopes which, he believed, were blasted by the rashness of the Ulster Irish, the rapacity of Irish land speculators, and the complications of English politics, all which precipitated the catastrophe of 1641.
 The Catholic Confederation of 1642, he maintained, was defensible as the only means of self-defence against the open enmity of the Lords Justice, Borlase and Parsons, the deep laid schemes of a hoary adept in confiscation, and the fanaticism of the extreme English part, which maintained, even prior to the Confederation, that the extirpation of Catholics was indispensable for the “settlement” of Ireland. Of course, Dr. Lynch defends the cessation of 1643, the peace of 1646 and 1648, condemns the Nuncio, approves the general policy of Ormond3e, on the ground that these measures were indispensable for loyality to the English Crown, and for the safety of Irish Catholics. He even praises the Catholic Earl of Clanrickarde, for having never joined the Confederation. In general, his opinions agree with those of David Rothe, who, it is commonly believed, had drawn up the plan of the supreme council of the Confederates.
 On the surrender of Galway in 1653, Dr. Lynch fled to France, one of those fugitive whom he describes so feelingly in this work, as scattered to the four winds of heaven by the English Puritans. The particulars of his life in exile are unkinown. But as some of his works were prointed at St. Malo’s, we may infer that he had taken refuge on the borders of Brittany, where the States alloted public support for Irish exiles. His kinsman, Andrew Lych, Bishop of Kilfenora, resided at St. Malo’s, and was visited there in 1661 [vii] by Francis Kirwan, Bishop of Killala, and uncle of Dr. Lynch. Some of these clerical exiles were engaged in professional duties but our author’s time must have been devoted to his books.
 His translation of Keating into elegant Latin, I think, was his first production, and composed in Ireland. The preface gives a just estimate of Keating’s work for industry and honesty, refutes the objections urged against its publication, and demands for its manifest deficiencies that indulgence from Irishman, which all nations have extended to those who had first endeavoured to compile a national history. The style of Dr. Lynch’s preface, though fair, is deficient in that ease whcih characterizes a large portion of his subsequent writings. The translation is free, sometimes paraphrastic, but always faithful.
 In 1662, his great work, Cambrensis Eversus, was published under the name of “Gratianus Lucius”. [...] (pp.iii-vii.)

[...]

[...W]hile he was putting the last hand to his work, and perhaps congratulating himself on that learned chapter, in which he proves, by such an imposing army of precedents, drawn from the authors of every country in Europe, that the Anglo-Irish are really Irish, and ought to be called so, a work was presented to the Propaganda, in 1659, by one of the old Irish race. It was an elaborate impeachment of the whole Anglo-Irish family, a kind of supplement to the Remonstrance of Domhnall O’Neill, in the fourteenth century, but urging accusations far more momentous. There could be no peace, it declared, until the Anglo-Irish had been corrected or expelled. They had supported heresy under Elizabeth, and by their half-measures in the late war had ruined Ireland. Dr. Lynch stood forward as the apologist of his race. In an exceedingly rare and valuable book, he reviews Anglo-Irish history, indignantly [ix] rejects the name of Anglo-Irishman, extols the superiority of his race; their greater wealth, power, and civilization, their stately cities and fertile lowlands; their fidelity to their faith, which so many of them has defended by their writings, or sealed by their blood; and, what accords badly with modern flimpsy theories, their numerical superiority. It must be admitted that the ardor of controversy hurries him into some statements which his cooler judgement rejects in the Cambrensis Eversus; but, as a history of the Anglo-Irish race, especially of their anomalous position under Elizabeth, the Alithonologia has no rival. It is in that work that he gives his opinion on the history of tbe Irish Catholics, and sketches of most of their leading men, from 1641 to 1652. His loyalty, of course, is of true Anglo-Irish burgher stamp, but never descends to that erastian compliance which secularized the Church without serving the country in Catholic times, and which, in his own day, for a gleam of roval favor, was but too ready to sell ecclesiastical rights. In point of style, the work combines, with the good qualitics of Cambrensis Eversus, the vigor and fire of animated controversy; while, in moderation, it presents a favorable contrast with most of the politico-religious literature of the age on both sides of the Irish sea. (pp.ix-x.)