John Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches (1867)

IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
PART FIEST.
REVIEW OF THE PAST.
CHAPTER I.
IF an International Court were established as a supreme tribunal to the decisions of which all States should submit, and to which oppressed nationalities might appeal, there is some reason to apprehend — judging from the tone of the Continental and the American press, and from the speeches of such English statesmen as Mr. Bright and Mr. Stuart Mill — that in the case of Ireland v. England the verdict would be for the plaintiff, with heavy damages. If the tribunal could exercise the functions of a divorce court, and cruelty and neglect could be pleaded as a ground for the dissolution of the union, it is quite possible that Ireland might obtain a decree for separation. There is too much reason to believe that all Europe would concur in the opinion recently expressed in the Opinion Rationale, that “England is being punished for the injustice she has been guilty of towards Ireland — for her contempt for the rights of the whole people — for her egotism and religious fanati cism. And in reference to the Fenian conspiracy, it is to
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be feared that there are few of the nations or governments of Christendom that do not wait, with no very friendly feeling for England, to see “what force and energy there is in the passion of a persecuted, disinherited, starving people, whose only salvation is in expatriation en masse.”
It is almost impossible to get foreign writers to understand the real case of Ireland; and we should not be surprised at this when we find such contradictory opinions expressed, not only in the English journals, but by some of the most enlightened English statesmen, who have been debating Irish questions for a quarter of a century in the House of Commons, with the benefit of some hundreds of blue-books. At home and abroad, in Ireland as well as in England, we find the most obstinate adherence to one-sided representa tions. One set of orators and writers will see only the case of the plaintiff, and another only the case of the defendant. A thorough, impartial, judicial review of the state of Ireland, past and present, is the rarest thing in the world. False impressions are continually produced by speaking of Ireland as if the country were inhabited only by one race, belonging to one Church. It is impossible to come to a, right conclusion on the Irish Question without considering the various con flicting social forces that are at work in the country. The Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, the Roman Catholic nobility and gentry, including most of the professional and mercantile classes, all the population of British descent, are attached to British connexion. But the mass of the agricultural and labouring classes — the existing representatives of the “mere Irish” of former ages — the survivors of the penal code — are still more or less subject to chronic disaffection, and cherish an inveterate animosity against England. And as the majority of the priests have sprung from the same classes, and have inherited the same instinct of morbid nationality— the result of long ages of injustice and proscription— they naturally sympathise with their flocks, and passionately denounce the English Government. There are exceptions it is true. Many of the Roman Catholic clergy are free from this unhappy
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bias. But of the majority of the native Irish and their clergy, it may be said that rebellion runs in their blood, and is bred in the bone. Nor is this true merely of the Celtic portion of the population — pure Celts, indeed, are not at all so numerous in Ireland as most public writers imagine, nor do they count for much in the forces of society. They are found among the mountains of Donegal, Connaught, Kerry, and the wild districts of Munster; but they are now the poor and feeble remnant of a dwarfed and degraded race, by which almost exclusively the English agricultural labour market is supplied with hands for gathering in the harvest. The Eoman Catholic peasantry who inhabit the richer and better portions of the country are generally of a mixed race, and quite a superior breed of men. It is a curious fact, that among them, and not among the spiritless Celtic clans, the most dangerous elements of rebellion have always been found. Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare, Wexford, Carlow, Kil kenny, King’s and Queen’s Counties, Waterford, Cork, Tip- perary, Limerick, Louth, Armagh, Monaghan, Cavan, Meath, and Westmeath, counties in which the Irish and English “bloods” have mingled most freely from the Conquest down to the present time, have been the scenes of nearly all the political and agrarian combinations that have given the English Government most trouble, and called for the greatest number of coercion acts. It was in the most English counties of “the Pale,” where the Irish language had not been spoken for ages, that the rebellion of 1798 raged most furiously, and that the anti-tithe war became most formidable.
Then, there is in all parts of the country a considerable portion of the population that has been severely tried by the transition state of society during the last few years. Many of the small farmers have given up in despair the struggle to live by the cultivation of the soil, in consequence of free trade, which renders it almost impossible to make small farming pay. It is not without bitter feelings that these people have relinquished their homesteads and emigrated to America, or sunk to the rank of day-labourers. The high prices of cattle and live stock generally have caused the
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large farmers to throw their land out of cultivation simply because grazing pays better; and they thus at once escape the risks of an uncertain climate, and the trouble and loss, perhaps danger, of dealing with refractory labourers, who, instead of honestly earning their Avages, might, as members of agrarian combinations, be possibly plotting the assassina tion of their employers. The result of this state of things is, that there has been no steady demand for agricultural labour; while throughout vast districts of country there are no resident gentry or capitalists of any kind to give employ ment to the people, and few farmers able to spend any money in the improvement of the land. Even if they had money they would hoard it unprofitably, or put it in some bank where the agent could not hear of it, rather than invest it in the soil, because, as they assert, when once so invested it would be lost to them and theirs for ever, and become instantly by law the property of the landlord, who could, and in the majority of cases would, put on an additional rent in proportion to the value of the improvements. The heart of industry is thus sickened and its hand paralysed, while the chronic disaffection inherited from past ages is inflamed by a burning sense of present injustice. The peasantry say they cannot cherish loyalty towards a Govern ment under which it is impossible for them to live by in dustry in the land of their birth — under which the people must be cleared off to make way for cattle and sheep; while their expatriation is a matter of national thanksgiving and the plague among cattle a matter of national humiliation. The sons of those small farmers have been educated in the national schools; but their education, instead of bettering their temporal condition, has made them feel that condition more keenly. Their discontent has been fostered by reading the literature of a fanatical nationality, and newspapers which appeal to the feelings thus engendered. The history of their country, which they study, is as inflammatory as if it had been written in the light of the conflagrations which consumed the churches, monasteries, and homes of their forefathers; and for existing monumental illustrations of
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this history they behold beside the ivy-clad ruins of the great religious and charitable foundations which were the glory of their country in past ages, the untenanted and neglected mansions of absentee noblemen, to whose ancestors the surrounding lands were assigned by confiscating in vaders. The feelings of indignation and hatred against England which the scene excites are not mitigated by the appearance of the parish church which stands within the sacred precincts, presenting an ugly contrast to the magni ficent structure which it has superseded, with its well- endowed rector, ministering to a congregation of twenty or thirty people, while a thousand members of the disinherited Church kneel upon an earthen floor in a rudely constructed chapel in the neighbouring village. Contrasts like these are visible in every part of the country, and are fraught with associations which certainly do not foster loyalty to the power by which those changes were violently effected, and which has done so little to compensate for the desolation and spoliations to which those touching and venerable monu ments of the past bear witness.
If meditations among the tombs of Ireland awaken such painful reminiscences in the minds of the laity, even those of them who are least educated — for they are an imaginative people, prone to brood over the past — how much more powerful must be the impression produced upon the rninds of the Roman Catholic priests. Some of the more aged of these have been educated upon the Continent, and can tell their hearers of the grandeur and beauty of the cathedrals, abbeys, and colleges enjoyed by their Church in Italy, France, and Germany. Many of the younger priests also have resided in foreign cities, or travelled over the Continent occasionally ; and they, by the graphic accounts they give, exalt the ideas of their flocks with regard to the power and splendour which the munificence of States or of private individuals has conferred upon their Church. They tell them, at the same time, that it was so in Ireland before the Reformation ; and that no nation in Europe was more re nowned for its ecclesiastical monuments and its charitable
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institutions. Even the home-bred priests, who have never loft their own country, who have been educated at Maynooth, All Hallows, Tuarn, Carlow, and Thuiies, constantly expatiate upon this theme in their addresses from the altar. The fact that the majority of the priests have sprung from the people, while accounting for their strong national antipathies, does not prevent their imbibing the largest measure of the sacer dotal spirit. Eacli one of them was designated for the priestly office from early boyhood, thenceforth regarded as a san-ed member of the family, and for some ten years of his life educated in the midst of monastic influences and ascetic observances, shut in from the world — all calculated to give him the most exalted idea of the character he was about to assume when the bishop’s hands ordained him for his mission. While, therefore, there is a thorough sympathy between the priest and his flock in Ireland, and he is approached by the humblest of them with the greatest confidence, he is at the same time looked up to with feelings of reverence and awe for his spiritual powers and functions to which Christians of other denominations are strangers. We may well conceive, then, the effect produced b}^ the impassioned declamations of these trusted guides of the people, when they depict the wrongs of their country, and the outrages perpetrated in past ages upon their national Church, first plundered, and then persecuted. They quote from such books as Cobbett’s “ History of the Reformation” descriptions of the spoliation of ecclesiastical property, and the demolition of famous religious houses. They give instances of sacrilegious confis cation, and point to the Protestant dukes and earls who now enjoy princely revenues from the alienated estates of the Church. They recite thrilling narratives of the sufferings of hunted priests who exposed their lives to minister to the wants of their scattered flocks; of martyred bishops, who went to the scaffold rather than apostatise from the faith— e victims of a cruel, vindictive, insatiable spirit of persecu- i, which was at length, after many gallant but disastrous L for freedom, embodied in a penal code, the atrocious severity of which excited the horror of Christendom On
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 7
this subject they quote the denunciations of the most eminent Protestant writers and orators, such as Edmund Burke, Hallam, Brougham, and Bright ; and on the subject of the Irish confiscations they are able to appeal, among others, to the admissions of Lord Clare, the great Chancellor of Ireland at the time of the Union, who in a speech on that occasion reminded the House of Lords that the gentlemen outlawed for the rebellion in 1688 numbered 8,978 ; and that their Irish possessions, as far as could be computed, were then of the annual value of £211,623, and comprised 1,060,792 acres. This land was sold under an English Act of Parliament, to meet the expenses incurred in reducing the rebels, and the sale introduced into Ireland a new set of adventurers. But this was only a small part of the confiscations. Ac cording to Lord Clare’s statement, in the reign of James I. the whole of the province of Ulster was confiscated, con taining 2,836,837 acres ; let out by the Court of Claims at the Restoration, 7,800,000 acres ; forfeitures of 1688, 1,060,792 acres; total, 11,697,629. The noble lord then proceeded : — “ So the whole of the island has been confiscated with the exception of the estates of five or six families of English blood, some of whom had been attainted in the reign of Henry VIII., but recovered their possessions before Tyrone’s rebellion, and had the good fortune to escape the pillage of the English republic inflicted by Cromwell ; and no inconsiderable portion of the island has been confiscated twice, or perhaps thrice, in the course of a century. The situation, therefore, of the Irish nation at the revolution stands unparalleled in the history of the inhabited world. If the wars of England, carried on here from the reign of Elizabeth, had been waged against a foreign enemy the inhabitants would have retained their possessions under the established law of civilised nations, and their country have been annexed as a province to the British Empire.” From the same authority they learn that the English policy was “ a declaration of perpetual war against the natives of Ireland, and that it has rendered her a blank amidst the nations of Europe, and retarded her progress in the civilized world.”
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Mr. Phelan, one of the ablest Protestant writers of his day, nearly half a century ago, thus described the sentiments of the Irish Roman Catholics, in contemplating the history of their country :—” The Papacy,” says he, “maintains its ascendancy, by an artful system of accommodation to the natural principles and motives of man. Of these it has chieily taken to its aid in Ireland, that national spirit and pride of ancestry by which the lower classes of our country men are so amiably, yet so dangerously distinguished. The Irish are a fondly national people; they know little of their ancestors, but they believe of them everything which enters into their conceptions of worth and greatness; and they feel a high, although mournful consolation, in turning from their own condition to the supposed freedom, and glory, and happiness of other times. These principles have been incor porated into their creed — they receive their religion as the last bequest, and the last token of their almost canonised forefathers, and they cling to it with a devoted and desperate fidelity. “ To cherish and keep alive this persuasion among them, legends, miracles, and prophecies, are devised with lavish but adroit profusion. Their religion is made to look vener able through the vista of antiquity — interesting in the garb and attitude of decay ; and this interest assumes a dearer, and this veneration a holier character, from the sympathy of the Church with the fallen fortunes of her children. Thus the faith of a zealous Roman Catholic, though not that which either the truly spiritual or the truly philosophic would prefer, comes upon him with the romantic power of a pic turesque and melancholy grandeur. Its influence is aided by the habits of a rural life — it is recalled by the ruined abbey, and the tottering round tower — it is studiously asso ciated with the hearths, the tombs, and the altars of his progenitors. It is similarly connected, and by similar artifices, with all those of whatsoever country, who in the first and purest ages of the Gospel departed this life in the faith and fear of God ; until through a long line of martyrs and con- -through St. Patrick— through the apostles— it finally blends itself with the Saviour of the world. The
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ambition which such considerations inspire is not to be estimated by political arithmeticians ; it is not of earth alone. It seeks to combine earth and heaven, and tinges even dreams of worldly aggrandisement with a ray of brighter and purer illumination.”
The Irish Catholics are not an intolerant people. Speaking from personal experience, I can testify that, taking the mass of the population, there is no body of Christians in Ireland that have more respect for the rights of conscience in their neighbours, or that will more patiently hear arguments against their creed. But they hate proselytism, knowing that religion has so often been made the pretext of oppres sion, and that it is still the pretext of a political ascendancy on the part of a small minority of the nation, representing the ancient colony that “ warred for four centuries against the Irish Enemy” — meaning the Irish nation — and warred for one object only — to get possession of the lands, and make the inhabitants their serfs. The war was waged with as much cruelty, with as much disregard of the commonest rights of humanity, when the invaders, aggressors, and per secutors were Catholics, as in the worst times of the Eliza bethan, the Cromwellian, or the Williamite wars. After carefully studying the records of the period between the conquest by Henry II. and the Reformation, I can find no modern parallel to the feeling of the English Catholics towards the Irish Catholics, but the feeling of the whites of Jamaica towards the blacks. No negroes fared the better during the reign of terror in Jamaica because they were Protestants; they were flogged, shot, and hanged all the same as if they had been idolaters and cannibals. It is probable that the utterance of a prayer, or a text of Scrip ture, would have increased the rage of their tormentors and executioners. But with all their rage and cruelty, the white Christians of Jamaica did not dare to say — though they acted as if they believed it — that it was no more sin to kill a negro than to kill a dog. Yet the English priests, friars, and monks of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth cen turies did not scruple to utter the atrocious sentiment with
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regard to their fellow Christians in. Ireland. The sentiment
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was embodied again and again in public documents, in Acts of Parliament, in bishops’ pastorals, and the whole law and policy of the Pale were based upon the assumption that the killing of a mere Irishman was no murder, and that so far
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from being a crime to be ignominiously punished, it was a deed to be honourably rewarded.
The earliest as well as the most interesting and memor able statement of the case of Ireland was presented by King O’Niell for the Irish chiefs in. the shape of a “Remonstrance” to Pope John XXII. in the year 1317. After reciting the facts connected with the grant of Ireland by Pope Adrian to Henry II., they proceeded to state their grievances. They alleged that ever since the English appeared first upon their coasts in virtue of the above surreptitious donation, they entered their territories “under a certain specious pretext of piety, and hypocritical show of religion, endeavouring in the meantime, by every artifice malice could suggest, to extir pate the natives root and branch;” that by force and fraud they had expelled them from their fair and ample habitations and paternal inheritances, so that they were obliged to take refuge, like wild beasts, in the mountains, the woods, and the morasses of the country; the invaders daring to assert that not a single part of Ireland belonged to the Irish, but was by right entirely their own. Even the Church lands were invaded on all sides ; the cathedrals were plundered of half their possessions; bishops and prelates were cited, arrested, and imprisoned without distinction. The English deprived the natives of their own ancient laws, and estab lished instead an iniquitous code of their own. English Dominicans, Franciscans, monks, canons, &c., after extermi nating the native virtues, and introducing the most abomi nable vices, “asserted the heretical doctrine that it was no more sin to kill an Irishman than to kill a dog, or any other The Remonstrance frankly states the effect pro- d on the Irish by the conduct of the invaders The awful enmity so plainly avowed it is to be feared survives to some extent, to the present day, and finds its natural ex-’
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pression in Fenianism. The chiefs declare as follows: — “All hope of peace between us is completely destroyed; for such is their pride, such their excessive lust of dominion, such our ardent ambition to shake off this insupportable yoke, and recover the inheritance which they have so unjustly usurped, that as there never was, so there never will be, any sincere coalition between them and us; nor is it possible there should be in this life, for we entertain a certain natural enmity against each other, flowing from mutual malignity, descending by inheritance from father to son, and spreading from generation to generation. Nor can wre be accused of perjury or rebellion, since neither our fathers nor we did at any time bind ourselves by any oath of alle giance to their fathers or to them ; and therefore, without the least remorse of conscience, while breath remains, we will attack them in defence of our just rights, and never lay down our arms until we force them to desist.”
It must be confessed that the complaints of the Irish chiefs were too well provoked by the acts of the invaders. In the little colonial state which the Anglo-Irish had estab lished, having its head-quarters in Dublin, there was a per fect union of the civil and ecclesiastical powers. Bishops were not only chancellors and viceroys, but also generals, who led the forces of the Pale against the “ Irish enemy,” and had little mercy upon even the native clergy who fell under their power, and not a particle of scruple about plunder ing and burning down churches and monasteries. They had a parliament of their own, in which they passed laws utterly forbidding, under the severest penalties, any sort of intercourse or commerce in the way of business, or hospi tality, or even in religion, with the people of the country, whose habits and manners they sternly proscribed ; punish ing any of the colonists who, yielding to the attractions of Irish society, conformed to the national costumes and usages. The chiefs represented the Anglo-Irish of those times as a lawless race, quite different from the English in their own country. But both the English and the Irish must be judged with reference to the rude times in which they lived,
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When they were good they were very good ; when they were wicked they were very wicked; and both by violent fits. Men who had gloried in plundering and burning churches, spent their ill-gotten fortunes munificently in the founding of abbeys, cathedrals, and monasteries, and in the endowment of various religious and charitable institutions. And lax as they were often in their morals, they occasionally made the most desperate efforts to put a stop to scandalous offences. For example, “in 12G8 it was agreed between the Church authorities and the Dublin Corporation, that if a man committed a public sin, the first offence might be com muted for money; that if lie continued in the sin, and the same be public and enormous, that then he be cudgelled about the Church of St. Patrick; and that if still he per sisted in the sin, the official of the archbishop should give notice of it to the mayor and bailiffs. It became their duty then to turn him out of the city, or cudgel him through it. It was decreed that after such public sins there should be a yearly inquisition. But in no case could any official of the archbishop draw one beyond the jurisdiction of the city. Every offender was to be tried within the city.”
If we doubted the annals of the time, or the testimony of the Irish chiefs, we should have the most conclusive evi dence in the “Statute of Kilkenny” that the appeal of an Irishman, exclaiming, “Am I not a man and a brother?” would have been utterly lost upon the Englishmen of the Pale, just as much as a similar appeal from one of the Maories of New Zealand would be lost now upon one of the colonists in that island, after a series of wars, waged exactly in the same spirit, and for the same object — the possession of territory— as the wars of Ireland in the thirteenth, four teenth, and fifteenth centuries. Yet there was a charm about the free, joyous, jolly life of the native Irish which many of the English found it impossible to resist,— a charm which the poet Spenser described like one who felt its power, and to which many of the colonists yielded with their whole hearts, thereby incurring the proverbial reproach of being ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores. To check this growing evil
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the English passed the famous “Statute of Kilkenny” in 1367. By this it was enacted that alliances with the Irish by marriage, fostering, gossipred, &c., were high treason. The old Bvehon law, which was the law of the land, the Kilkenny Parliament denounced as “wicked and damnable,” and enacted that all who submitted to it should be accounted traitors. On the other hand, if any Irishman was found within the Pale, not shaved, and dressed in the English fashion, and who could not speak the English language, he was to be punished by confiscation of his lands and goods; and if he had no property, he was to be imprisoned till he submitted. No Irishman’s cattle were allowed to graze upon an Englishman’s land, no Irish ecclesiastic was to get a bene fice, and it was made penal for any religious house to receive any Irishman into their profession, though they might re ceive “any Englishman, without taking into consideration whether he be born in England or in Ireland.” Hence, as Dr. Todd remarks, “his blood was his crime.” Three arch bishops and five bishops were consenting parties to this anti-social enactment, and pledged themselves to denounce the spiritual sentence of excommunication against all its violators. In those times the Pope nominated many of the Anglo-Irish bishops and other ecclesiastics, and he was al ways ready to fulminate his thunder against the king’s Irish enemies. The Statute of Kilkenny seems to have been the re-enactment of an older law, to which reference was made by the Irish princes. But the same spirit continued to pervade the legislation of the Pale down to the Reformation, when the Parliament changed the title of Henry VIII. from “Lord of Ireland” to “King of Ireland.” The English sove reign, however, was but King of Ireland nominally until the reign of Elizabeth. “Hence it is,” says Sir John Davis, “that in all the parliamentary rolls that are extant from the fortieth year of Edward III., when the Statutes of Kilkenny were enacted, to the reign of Henry VIII., we find the degenerate and disobedient English called rebels; but the Irish which were not in the king’s peace are called enemies.” After enumerating a number of statutes passed in the reigns
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of Henry IV., Henry VI., Edward IV., and Henry VIII., he proceeds, “All these speak of English rebels, and Irish enemies, as if the Irish had never been in the condition of subjects, but always out of the protection of the laws, and were indeed in a worse case than aliens of any foreign realm that was in amity with the Crown of England. For by divers heavy penal laws the English were forbidden to marry, to foster, to make gossips with the Irish, or to have an}’ trade or commerce in their markets or fairs. Nay, there was a law made no longer since than the 28th Henry VIII., that the English should not marry with any person of Irish blood, though lie had gotten a charter of denization, unless he had done both homage and fealty to the king in Chancery, and were also boundeii by recognizance in sureties to con tinue a loyal subject. Whereby it is manifest that such as had the government of Ireland, under the Crown of England, did intend to make a perpetual separation of enmity be tween the English and the Irish.” In later times the phrase “Irish enemy” was represented by the word Papist. And it is a singular fact, as showing the permanent influence of such a system of legislation, and the force of those interests which gave it effect, that half a century ago, a Protestant gentleman would have lost caste by marrying a Roman Catholic of the most respectable family; and we all remem ber that so eminent a statesman as Lord Lyndhurst, the Chancellor of England, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords, described the Irish Catholics as “ aliens in blood, language, and religion.” That a race inhabiting Ireland before the Saxon set foot in England, subject to the British Crown for seven centuries, and said to have enjoyed the blessings of the Constitution for two or three centuries, should have been thus described by « the Nestor of the House of Peers”— will be a subject of marvel to future his torians.
It is a wonderful, and apparently an unaccountable fact, that at the Reformation, after four hundred years of this internecine warfare, sustained by implacable and social enmity, the English Pale was no larger than it was left by
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Henry II. Sir John Davis accounts for tlie fact by stating that England never sent over a military force sufficient for the complete subjugation of the island. But the result is mainly to be ascribed to the demoralised state of the colony, and to the mutual antagonism of the great Anglo-Irish lords, who were in fact a sort of sovereign princes, making war and peace at will, intensely jealous of each other, and for their own purposes intriguing with the chiefs of the Irish enemy. Owing to this state of things, the Pale at the time of the Reformation had dwindled to the smallest bounds, comprising only parts of three or four counties, and in the feeblest condition. It may be asked, then, why did not the Irish enemy drive out the English settlers? For the same cause. They were so frequently fighting against one another, wasting one another’s strength, destroying one another’s habitations, crops, and cattle, and reducing their country to the condition of a desert. Not only did sept war against sept, but the same sept split into factions, and fought as fiercely as if attacking a common foe. An instance of this kind occurred in Galway, when the leader of one of the armed factions was the bishop.
Now, let it be remembered that this system of mutual destruction, animated by deadly hatred between race and race, chief and chief, clan and clan, which lasted for four hundred years, during which ten thousand feuds were be queathed “from bleeding sire .to son,” prevailed among a people who were exclusively Catholic, and when Protes tantism had not been in existence. But the King of England revolted against the papal authority, and broke oft all connection with Home. Then the rich supplies from England, and also from the Anglo-Irish, were stopped. No more Peter’s pence, no more “ provisions,” no more livings in Ireland for Italian, Spanish, French, and English ecclesias tics, the hangers-on of the Papal court. Then it was, and partly for these reasons, that the Pope, changed sides in Ire land, deserting the Pale, and adopting the cause of “ the Irish enemy,” so often excommunicated by him, and de nounced as schismatic, contumacious, vile, and barbarous.
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From that day to this Papal intervention in Ireland has been a thorn in the side of England, and the thunders of the Vatican have been fulminated by apostolic nuncios from the Irish camp against the English garrison. And indeed nothing could be more natural than that the Irish nation should°eagerly and gratefully accept this powerful support. Religious°persecution of the most ruthless character had come in the train of desolating conquest. For seventy years from the Reformation down there was no Catholic arch- bi-hop in Dublin.* The recusant prelates and clergy were chased away. No Irish-speaking minister was permitted to open his mouth in any of the pulpits; 110 mass could be publicly celebrated; no Catholic school could be opened; the churches were deserted and allowed to fall into ruin, if not demolished on account of their popish ornaments; while all the men of property and position in the country, who could manage to cross the seas, found refuge on the Continent, and most naturally laboured to enlist the sympathies of its sovereigns in order to recover their homes and their lands.
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Nor, so far as the people of Ireland are concerned, was the intervention of the Pope, the Spaniards, and the French, which led to so many disastrous wars with England, an unmixed evil. It gave hope of ultimate deliverance to a perishing nation, and saved from utter annihilation a most ancient and interesting race of men, while it acted on the rival clans, now crushed and scattered, as a powerful bond of union. The old native Church had been almost entirely destroyed by the internecine wars of four centuries, and it received the coup de grace from Elizabeth. Hitherto there had been the Papal Church of the Pale, which came in with the English colony, and the National Church of the Irish, which never could be brought into complete subjection to Rome, and which now ceased to exist, with the clans to which it had adhered, and from which it drew its support. Henceforth the Church of the Pale became Protestant, fol lowing the destiny of England ; and the nation gradually
* “History of ‘die Catholic Archbishops of Dublin since the Reforma tion.” By the Rev. Dr. Moran.
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obtained from Rome a new priesthood, strictly Papal in its origin, foreign in its education, and intensely, inveterately anti-English in its spirit and teaching. Hating England for her heresy, recruited more and more from the ranks of the subjugated race, and therefore full of its animosity and vindictiveness, while heroically devoted to the interests of a persecuted people, the Irish Roman Catholic priesthood imbibed the spirit of disaffection which English policy con tinued to foster and inflame from the Reformation to the Union. That disaffection had a perfectly intelligible cause, quite sufficient to account for its existence, intensity, and persistence, without supposing any inherent, invincible “difficulty* either in the Irish people, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, or the Papal policy. In the case of Ireland, stated by Sir John Davis, Attorney-General of James I. in this country, he ascribes the defects of the Irish peasantry — idleness, cunning, servility, and treachery — to the oppression they had endured for ages; but he bears testimony to the existence of very different qualities, which would be de veloped under good institutions and fair treatment, conclud ing his statement in the following words: — “The whole island from sea to sea had bin broup-ht into his Hio-hnes
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peaceable possession; and all the inhabitants in evvery corner thereof, have been absolutely reduced under his immediate subjection. In. which condition of subjects they will gladly continue, without defection, or adhering to any other Lord or King, as long as they may be protected and justly governed, without oppression on the one side or impunity on the other. For there is 110 nation of people under the sumie that doth love equall and indifferent justice better than the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, although it be against themselves, so as they may have the protection and benefit of the law, when upon just cause they do desire it.”* But equal justice they never got ; and nearly a century after this Mr. Molyneux published his famous “ Case of Ireland Stated, in relation to its being bound by Acts of Parliament
* “ Tracts and Treatises on Ireland.” Published by Mr. Alexander Thorn, Dublin, vol. i., p. 594.
C
18 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
made in England.” The Roman Catholic part of the nation was still the Irish enemy groaning under the penal code, or, rather, languishing in silent agony, for they were afraid to groan. Not their cause, however, so much as the cause of the English colony, was pleaded powerfully by Molyneux and Dean Swift. “ The Case of Ireland,” which could not be answered, gave so much offence in England, that the House of Commons ordered it to be Limit by the common hang man. But the work of Molyneux, advocating representative government and the principles of the Revolution, was eagerly and universally read by Catholics as well as Protestants, and sowed the seeds which ultimately germinated in Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform. Although Swift treated the Irish Papists with the utmost contempt, and had not the least idea that they should be admitted into the constitution, yet they idolised him, and still reverence his memory, because of the caustic wit with which he assailed England for ruling Ireland on despotic principles. Then followed the volunteers, and the brief period of “ Irish Inde pendence ;” the United Irishmen and the Rebellion of 1798; the purchase of the Irish Parliament and the Union ; the Catholic Association and the Emancipation Act ; the anti- tithes agitation and the Church Temporalities Act. And now, after an experiment of three hundred years, the Anglican Church planted in this country is still barely commensurate with the English Pale ; while the miserable “remnant which the civil wars had left of the Irish nation became swollen into a population of six or seven millions, with nearly an equal number in America and Great Britain, wishing the destruc tion of the power by which their forefathers were oppressed; as if to inculcate the doctrine of providential retribution, and to show that no power, however mighty, can be unjust with impunity. During the last half century England has been endeavouring slowly, but steadily, and always under the pressure of agitation, to atone for past wrongs to Ireland. But every single measure of concession, every act of justice and sound policy, though the withholding of it threatened the dismemberment of the empire, has been resisted strenu-
KEVIEW OF THE PAST. 19
ously, passionately, by the Tory party, the representatives of the old English interest or Protestant ascendancy, in the name of which so many legal iniquities had been perpetrated, and for the defence of which so much Irish blood had been shed, so much national poverty arid suffering inflicted. There are signs that the great work of reconciliation between the two nations is about to be accomplished. But no true recon cilement can grow except out of political equality, — the principle of equal justice, not to individuals only, but to countries and to churches. Religion is too powerful an element in Ireland, and the Roman Catholic priesthood are too ambitious and sensitive ever to rest satisfied with the government which ignores their Church as a church ; which holds diplomatic communion with the Sultan and outlaws the Pope ; which endows with wealth and privilege the clergy of a small section of the community, and leaves the clergy of the majority to subsist upon the precarious and eleemosynary supplies of the voluntary system, requiring for its successful working the constant application of sectarian and factious stimulants, with the violent exaggeration of religious differences.
C2
1KKLAX1) AND lli’lK CHUKCHES.
CHAPTEE II.
Ix one respect the Established clergy have become intensely national. They are passionately in love with the old Irish Church. The Church of St. Patrick, they contend, was truly and essentially an Episcopal Church of the Anglican type, with which the present Establishment is really identical. The identity is assumed to be a fact clearly demonstrated ; and on the strength of this assumption, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is regarded as an alien institution imposed upon the country, and possessing no right, human or divine, for persisting in its offensive intrusion. This is the, position taken by most of the Irish bishops and clergy since the publication of the Rev. Robert King’s “ Primer of the Church History of Ireland,” which has been made a class-book for Divinity Students in Trinity College, Dublin.
This must be regarded as one of the most extraordinary del usions of the age. “ The Church of the native Irish,” writes Dr. Todd, “ was discountenanced and ignored by Rome as well as by England. It consisted of the old Irish clergy and inmates of the monasteries beyond the limits of the English pale, who had not adopted, the English manners or language, and who were, therefore, dealt with as rebels, and compelled to seek for support from the charity or devotion of the people. Many of these took refuge in foreign countries, or connected themselves with foreign emissaries hostile to England at home; but at a subsequent period, when the Anfjlo-Irish Church had accepted the Reformation, the were Irish clergy were found to have become practically extinct.”*
When foreign writers in the interest of the Pope came to deal with the native Irish Church, they were shocked with
1 St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. A Memoir of his Life and By James Henthorn Todd, D.D., Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University, and Treasurer of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
REVIEW OF THE PAST, 21
what they regarded as its gross irregularities. St. Bernard, in his “ Life of Malachy,” for example, complains that up to his own times there had been “ a dissolution of ecclesiastical discipline, a relaxation of censure, a making void of religion, and that a cruel barbarism, nay, a sort of Paganism, were substituted under the Christian name.” In proof of this he adds that “ bishops were changed and multiplied at the pleasure of the Metropolitan, a thing unheard of since the beginning of Christianity ; without order, without reason, so that one bishoprick was not content with a single bishop, but almost every congregation had its separate bishop.” It is quite evident that St. Bernard was ignorant of the con stitution of the Irish churches, and equally ignorant of the ecclesiastical polity which prevailed throughout the Conti nental nations in the earliest and purest ages of Christianity. Neander, speaking of the earliest Apostolic Churches, says : — “ It is certain that every Church was governed by a number of the elders, or overseers, chosen from among themselves, and we find among them no individual distinguished above the rest, who presided as a primus inter pares ; though probably in the age immediately succeeding the Apostolic, of which we have unfortunately so few authentic memorials, the practice was introduced of applying to such a one the name episcopos, by way of distinction.”* Mosheim and Milner, in their Church histories, Dr. Hinds, in his “ Early Progress of Christianity,” and a host of the most learned Church historians, allow that there were no diocesan bishops in the churches founded by the Apostles and their imme diate followers. And Hooker, admitting the fact, observes : — “ The necessity of polity and regimen may be believed without holding any certain form to be necessary in them all. And the general principles are such as do not particu larly apply to any one ; but sundry forms of discipline may be equally consistent with the general maxims of Scripture.” If, then, every congregation in that country had its own bishop, instead of proving that the Irish Christians were * “ History of the Planting, &c., of the Church,” vol. i., p. 167,
20 [RKI.AND AND I1KJI CHURCHES.
corrupt, disorderly, and heathenish, it would prove only that they had adhered with fidelity to the primitive system of Church polity, modified by the peculiar circumstances of the country, and by the genius of the Celtic institutions. The word “bishop,” in the sense in which it is used by Churchmen, and generally understood, means a prelate who rules over a number of parochial clergy, be the same more or less. There was nothing of the kind in Ireland till it was imported by the Norsemen, and imposed by the Pope. During six or seven centuries after the introduction of Christianity, or about half the period that has elapsed since the mission of St. Patrick, the word “ parish,” or its equi valent, does not once occur in the history of the Irish Church. But the parish we know is the basis of the ecclesiastical system now established in England and Ireland. The old Irish Church was built without this foundation stone of Episcopacy ; and the first thing that the Rev. Dr. Todd can find which at all resembles a “ diocese” is indicated in the following words : — “ The district which owed allegiance to the cMr’ffaiti, and was inhabited by his followers, became the proper field of labour to his bishops and clergy, and this was the first approach made to a diocese or territorial juris diction in the Church of Ireland.”* But let not Presbyterians or Independents take comfort from the non-episcopal cha racter of that Church. Its ecclesiastical polity, if the word be applicable to such a state of things, was neither Presby terian nor Congregational. We look in vain for either model in the old Church of Ireland ; and nothing can be more futile than the attempt of controversialists to torture its ancient ecclesiastical records into proofs in favour of their respective systems of Church government.
When St. Bernard and other assailants charged the Irish Churches with having a. bishop for every congregation, they did not state the whole truth. The “ Four Masters” make the number of churches established by St. Patrick 700, with 700 bishops and 3,000 priests.! Dr. Petrie has published a * St, Patrick, p. 38. f O’Donovan’s Translation, A.D. 493.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 23
later record, A.D. 664, in which St. Patrick is said to have consecrated 350 bishops, 300 priests, and 700 churches. But no reliance can be placed on those numbers, The early MS. records were manipulated, and mixed with legends in the course of the middle ages. What is certain is, that almost every religious community worshipping in one place had not only one bishop, but several bishops, the prevailing number being seven, to ‘which the Irish Christians evidently attached a mystic import. Thus the Martyrology of Donegal mentions no less than six groups of seven bishops each, living together. In three of those cases the seven bishops are said to have been brothers — sons of one father. “ But this list,” says Dr. Todd, “is completely eclipsed by the 141 groups of seven bishops of various churches and places in Ireland, who are invoked in the Irish Litany, attributed to Aengus Cele De, or the Culdee, and probably composed in the ninth century.”- It is doubtful whether the number seven was deemed necessary, or was general in the churches. Dr. Todd thinks that the institution of seven bishops was only temporary. But there is no doubt that there was generally a plurality of bishops in each church or religious community, or that the bishop was ordained “per saltum” that is, without passing through any intervening orders, and that this was done by a single bishop with the simple formality of prayer and the imposition of hands, often with little attention to personal qualifications. Nothing more, there fore, was implied by the title of “bishop” than that the bearer was, as we should now say, in “ holy orders,” that he was a “clergyman” or “minister;” it gave him a certain clerical status, being, in fact, equivalent to our term “ Reve rend” The title conferred no jurisdiction whatever. Dr. Todd has made this quite plain and perfectly undeniable, by proofs drawn from the original records, admitted by such writers as Lanigan and Colgan. The learned dignitary gives the results of his inquiries in the following words : — “ From the foregoing facts and anecdotes, no doubt can remain in the mind of any unprejudiced reader that the normal state * St. Patrick, p. 32.
24, IRELAND AND HKR CHURCHES,
of Episcopacy in Ireland was, as we have described, non- diocesan, each bishop acting independently, without any archiepiscopal jurisdiction, and either entirely independent, or subject only to the abbat of his monastery, or in the spirit of clansliij) to liis chieftain. The consequence of this was necessarily a great multiplication of bishops. There was no restraint upon their being consecrated. Every man of eminence for piety or learning was advanced to the order of a bishop as a- sort of degree or mark of distinction. Many of these lived as solitaries or in monasteries. Many of them established schools for the practice of religious life and the cultivation of sacred learning, having no diocese or fixed episcopal duties; and many of them, influenced by mis sionary zeal, went forth to the Continent, to Great Britain, or to other heathen lands, to preach the gospel of Christ to the Gentiles.” Again, “On the Continent of Europe, the Christian empire, both in the East and in the West, was divided into episcopal provinces and dioceses, based upon the ancient civil divisions, and the canonical regulations in tjuestion were closely connected with the institution of metropolitan and diocesan jurisdiction. In Ireland, where there were no metropolitans, no dioceses, and no fixed or legally recognised civil divisions of the country, these canonical rules were inapplicable, and therefore were dis regarded.”*
The word “ archbishop,” it is true, occurs in Irish Church history; but Dr. Todd has shown that it was used in a sense totally different from its present meaning. The Irish word ard-episcof) is not equivalent to archbishop; it denotes simply an eminent or celebrated bishop, and there might be several of such archbishops in the same town or district.-)-
Dr. Todd has justly remarked that the clan is the true key to Irish history, political and ecclesiastical. Upon the clan Christianity was grafted in the monastic form, and this vital connection was maintained indissolubly till— after a struggle which endured for nearly four centuries— the clan system itself was destroyed by the power of England. When, * St. Patrick, pp. 27-79, f Ibid, p. 16,
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 25
the Christian missionaries first went to Ireland, they found the clans existing as the primitive form of government, with numerous chieftains virtually independent, and one, two, or three nominal kings. St. Patrick and his followers always applied themselves in the first instance to the chieftain, and with his conversion followed that of the clan or sept. At or near his head-quarters in the town, village, or station, they obtained permission to erect a church, and school, and a dwelling-house, in which they and their leading converts lived in community, cultivating the land they had obtained, teachino- those who came to them for instruction, and thus
O
forming centres of civilization. They selected almost in variably the sacred sites of Paganism, and built their wooden churches under the shadow of the Round Towers — then as mysterious and inscrutable as they are to-day. St. Patrick’s life was often in danger from the intolerance of the Druids. His ecclesiastical establishments were sur rounded by fortifications for the protection of the inmates ; and many of the most celebrated of them, as Armagh, Cashel, Downpatrick, Clogher, were built in situations possessing natural advantages for defence, or near the already fortified habitations of the converted chieftains. Whole tribes per sisted in rejecting Christianity for ages. Even where the greatest success was obtained, it was secured by a prudent tolerance of the national superstitions, or by even turning them to account, in order to graft upon them Christian ceremonies. It was only in “ some rare instances” that the missionary ventured upon the destruction of an idol, or the removal of a pillar-stone ; sometimes he contented himself with inscribing upon such stones the sacred names or symbols of Christianity, and ultimately they were changed into crosses. The very festivals of the heathen were re spected, and converted into Christian solemnities or holidays. The Beltine and the Samhain of our Pagan forefathers are still observed in the popular sports of May Day and All Hallow’s Eve ; while the bonfires on St. John’s Eve, through the flames of which children are accustomed to jump, and from which till lately coals were taken to the corn-fields to
26 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
secure them from blight, are a remnant of the worship of Baal. “Nothing is clearer,” says Dr. O’Donovan, “than that Patrick engrafted Christianity on the Pagan super stitions with so much skill that he won the people over to the Christian religion before they understood the exact difference between the two systems of belief; and much of this half-Pagan, half-Christian religion, will be found not only in the Irish stories of the Middle Ages, but in the superstitions of the peasantry to the present day.”*
Not only was the old Irish Church from the earliest times surrounded on all sides by gross forms of superstition arid idolatry, deeply rooted in the soil, but in later times it was exposed to corruption from the Pagan rites of the Danes or Norsemen, who had established themselves in the country. In order, therefore, that it might be able to withstand “ a lawless and savage Paganism,” in the midst of which neither life nor property was secure, monastic institutions became a necessity. The head of each of these coenobitie associations was the abbat, who was often a layman ; and sometimes the head of the institution was a woman, as in the case of St. Bridget of Kiklare.-f- Within the abbey or monastery the bishops lived and laboured, subject to the abbat so long as they chose to remain, but free to go where they pleased if they became discontented with their position, and aspired to be founders of similar institutions in other lands, which many of them did, winning great fame on the continent of Europe, and becoming saints in the Roman calendar. At home the bishops assisted in cultivating the soil, ploughing, digging, reaping, &c., unless the wealth of the institution rendered them independent of such toil, and enabled them to devote their energies exclusively to the cultivation of learning and art, and the instruction of the people around them. These communities were in some cases so numerous and prosperous that they became the nuclei of considerable towns.
K “ Four Masters,” p. 131.
t Dr. Tocld spells the word “abbat,” not “abbot,” following the rimitive and more oorrpo.t. nmrtJno
primitive and more correct practice.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 27
In a document first published by Archbishop Ussher, and supposed to have been written about the middle of the eighth century, the Irish “saints” are classed in three orders. The first were all famous and holy bishops, who rejected riot the services and society of women, “because, founded on the rock of Christ, they did not fear the blast of temptation.” They had but one head, Christ, but one chief, Patrick, but one mass, and one tonsure, from ear to ear. The second order had also one head and lord, but different masses or liturgies; they refused the services of women, separating them from the monasteries. The third order dwelt in desert places, lived on herbs and water, and on the alms of the faithful, despising property of all sorts. They were, in fact, hermits. Dr. Lampim accounts for the exclusion of women
O
from the monasteries, by the fact that it became necessary when they were crowded with young students; and he asks how would Dr. Ledwich like to see boarding-schools com posed indiscriminately of grown-up boys and girls. On this document Dr. Todd makes the remark, that throughout the whole of the catalogue there is not the smallest allusion to diocesan or archiepiscopal jurisdiction. Not a word is said of a primacy in Armagh, or any peculiar authority vested in the successors of St. Patrick, except this, that the first order, having their one head, Christ, followed Patrick as their leader or guide, retained in the celebration of their mass the liturgy introduced by him, adopted the same ton sure and the same Easter wThich he had taught, and were so far united in discipline “that what one of their churches excommunicated all excommunicated.” The second order of saints does not appear to have had any connexion with Armagh or the institutions of St. Patrick. They had re ceived a mass or liturgy from David, the celebrated Bishop of Menevia, now St. David’s, in Wales. This order was also connected with the Colomban churches of North Britain, Cumberland, and Durham. It was from this order proceeded “ that great stream of Irish missionaries who went forth to evangelise Europe at the end of the sixth and during some following centuries.” Dr. Todd adds the following remark-
9g IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES,
able passage:— “From them tlio venerable Bede must have derived his information respecting theScotic or Irish churches. From them must have been obtained all the information respecting Ireland which is to be found in the writings of Continental authors. And it is remarkable that in the writings of Bede we find no mention of St. Patrick or of Armagh. He speaks only of Columba and the presbyters or bishops of the second order of saints. Adam nan also, the biographer, although he once incidentally mentions St. Patrick, is silent as to Armagh. The Continental missionaries of the sixth and following centuries seem to have carried with them to Europe no traditions of Armagh or of Patrick. This remarkable silence has appeared to some unaccountable, and even inconsistent with the existence of St. Patrick. But the explanation, of it is obvious; the Irish saints of the second order were connected witli the British Church, and not with the Church of St. Patrick. They were disposed to emigration, and their religious zeal carried them to the Picts of North Britain and to the barbarous nations of the Conti nent of Europe to win souls to Christ. There was no reason why they should say anything to their converts about Armagh or the successors of St. Patrick. They were in all probability more anxious to connect the churches and monasteries which they had founded on the Continent with Rome and the successors of St. Peter, from whom more effectual support might be obtained. But that they did not altogether ignore St. Patrick is evident from the great collection of canons, from which D’Achery has published extracts, in which Patrick and the synods said to have been held by him are frequently referred to. This collection has been preserved in Continental libraries only, and w^as evidently compiled in one of the Continental monasteries connected writh Ireland.”*
The great peculiarity of the ancient Irish Church was its
clanship, and the fact that many of its abbats, or chief
rulers, were not in holy orders; and when they were in holy
orders, the rights of chieftaincy were transferred to the
* St. Patrick, pp. 95, 95.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 29
ecclesiastical landlords, who enjoyed them in hereditary succession. Thus the land granted in fee to St. Patrick, or any other ecclesiastic, conveyed to the clerical society of which it became the endowment, all the rights of a chieftain
O
or head of a clan. The com-arl), or co-arb— that is to say, the heir or successor of the original saint — who was the founder of the religious society, whether bishop or abbat, became the inheritor of his spiritual and official influence in religious matters. The descendants in blood, or “founder’s kin,” were inheritors of the temporal rights of property, although bound to exercise those rights in subjection, or subordination, to the ecclesiastical co-arb. There was some times a double succession, or progenies, ecclesiastical and lay, both connected by blood with the original founder or donor of the lands. The tendency of this system was to throw the ecclesiastical succession into the hands of the lay succession, and so to defeat the object of the founder, by transferring the endowment to the laity. This is what actually took place in Armagh, and continued for two hun dred years, the head of the ecclesiastical community, or monastery, whose successor afterwards claimed to be Primate of all Ireland, being actually a layman, and employing others to do the clerical duty. The rank of the feudal lord or chieftain, absorbed the co-existing episcopal or sacerdotal character in the co-arb, or spiritual chieftain. The “family” of a monastery comprehended not only the bishops, friars, or monks, and other religious inmates, but included also in many cases the vassals, serfs, or clansmen who lived on the lands around the abbey, and other dependencies. Sometimes an abbat was a pluralist, and had under his rule several monasteries. For example, the Abbat of Hy was the common head of the monasteries of Durrow, Kells, Swords, Drumcliff, and other houses in Ireland, founded by Columba, whose successor he was. Hence the “family” of Columbkill was composed of the congregations, or inmates, and dependents of all those monasteries, together with the mother-monastery of the island of Hy. The feudal abbat, therefore, was often able to turn out a large body of fighting men to defend his
30 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
establishments and his estates, in which they had a joint property. In general, however, the family of the monastery consisted only of the monk-bishops and their assistants. This mixture of the temporal and spiritual has been a source of the utmost confusion to ecclesiastical historians, who looked at the old Irish Church through the modern hierarchical system, and laboured to trace the line of apos tolical succession from St. Patrick down to their own time. “ Even Ussher, Ware, and Lanigan,” says Dr. Todd, “ led away by their preconceived opinions, as to the existence of diocesan succession from the age of St. Patrick, were unable to realise to themselves the strange state of society indicated bv our ancient records, and the still more strange state of the Church when bishops were without dioceses or terri torial jurisdiction. Hence it is that these eminent writers took the modern state of the Church, since the establishment of dioceses, as the model of what they conceived was, or ought to have been, the state of the Church in the days of Patrick and Columbkill, and thus they have confounded the ancient covbes with chorepiscopi, and erenachs with arch deacons. Even Colgan, influenced by the same prejudices, fell into the same mistakes.”“
The latter office mentioned had reference to the Church lands, and was also hereditary in the same families. There are ancient lists of the co-arbs of St. Patrick; but Dr. Todd, the most learned antiquary in the Irish Established Church, and probably the most competent of living judges in such matters, affirms that they all bear internal evidence of having been drawn up at the close of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century, “when,” he adds, “archiepiscopal and diocesan jurisdiction were introduced — and it is probable that their authors were influenced by a wish to establish a claim to a regular episcopal succession — at least at Armagh, and thus to escape so far the reproach of irregularity, which the Roman party amongst the Norsemen and English of that period had brought against the Irish Church. Hence, in reference to a regular succession in Armagh, or elsewhere, * St. Patrick, p. 162.
BE VIEW OF THE PAST. 31
Dr. Todd says, emphatically, “THE TRUTH is, THERE WAS
NO SUCH THING.”*
The monastic institutions or clan-churches were mutually independent and perfectly free from external authority, although they made repeated attempts to establish common rules of discipline, and to be so far united that what one church excommunicated all should excommunicate. But the Church followed the fortunes of the sept to which it belonged, and its establishments were plundered and burned without scruple in the course of the almost internecine war which the chiefs and tribes waged against each other. The Celtic abbeys had been plundered by the Danes for cen turies before the Conquest; they were devastated by Anglo- Norman settlers for centuries after the Conquest; and they often became the prey of those native chiefs who should have united to a man in their defence. Thus Glendalough and its “Seven Churches,” situated in the Wicklow moun tains, 011 the border of that gloomy lake celebrated by Moore, had in the twelfth century become a stronghold of robbers. Nothing seems to have withstood the violence of the times but the Round Tower, which sphinx-like looks down upon the ruins of the rudely-constructed ecclesiastic buildings ; and when we examine both, we cannot but wonder how any man could believe that they were erected by the same race of people, and for the same religious purposes.
Dr. Todd remarks on the native independence of the Irish Church: — “It was not looked upon as coming from foreigners, or as representing the manners and civilization of a foreign nation. Its priests and bishops, the successors of St. Patrick in their missionary labours, were many of them descendants of the ancient kings and chieftains, so -venerated by a clan-
ish people By his judicious management the
Christianity which he founded became self-supporting. It was endowed by the chieftains without any foreign aid. It was supplied with priests and prelates by the people them selves, and its fruits were soon seen in that wonderful stream * St. Patrick, p. 172.
l}-2 1RKLANJ) AND HKlt CHl’HCHKS.
of zealous missionaries, the glory of the Irish Church, who went forth in the sixth and seventh centuries to evangelize the barbarians of central Europe.”
Such was the ancient Church of Ireland which perished three centuries ago, after enduring for a thousand years !
If, then, we want to trace the genealogy of the parish priest, the rector, or the vicar, and of the modern diocesan bishop, we need not look to the ancient Irish Church, in which no such tilings were ever known; but we find them transplanted from England, and flourishing in the Church of fit:’ PtiJ;>. A brief sketch of this Anglican institution \vill throw additional light upon the absurd ecclesiastical assumption on which such weighty material and social interests are made to depend, and on the strength of which the Established clergy would keep Ireland for ever standing on its smaller end.”
The Danes, who occupied Dublin and the seaports, with the territory along the eastern coast, refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Irish Abbats, and looked to the English Primate for the consecration of their bishops long before the English conquest by Henry II. By this they incurred the jealousy and hostility of the native abbats and clergy. The hostility was mutual. Throughout those ages the Church of Dublin and its rulers were always intensely anti-Irish. Of twenty-eight prelates who occupied the see from Donatus to the Reformation, a period of GOO years, there were only seven who were not Englishmen, or Northmen of some other country, and of these seven the greater number seem to have been educated in England. It must be admitted, however, that the people and clergy of Dublin had some better reason than mere national jealousy for repudiating the jurisdiction of the “Archbishop” of Armagh
. C3
A great effort was made in the year 1152 by the Pope, through Cardinal Paparo, to bring all the Irish Churches into
“As long as Ireland shall pretend, like sugarloaf turned upside down, To stand upon its smaller end, so long shall live old Rock’s renown.”
Thomas Moore.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 33
a state of uniformity and subjection to the Papal See. It is recorded that the principal personages of Ireland, bishops, abbats, princes, and chiefs, with “three thousand ecclesiastics,” then assembled; but the synod was not held either in Armagh
•/ O
or Dublin ; nor is it known for certain where it was held. Some say at Drogheda, some at Mellifont, and some at Kells. The decrees of the synod, however, remained to a great extent a dead letter, till they were partially enforced by the sword of Henry II., who covenanted to be a collector of rents and dues for the Pope, and in consideration thereof his Holiness gave his assent to the “pious and praiseworthy desire” of the English King to subject the wild Irish to the Church’s laws, extirpating vice, and preserving Church rights in the island, by which his Majesty was to obtain from God “an accumulation of eternal rewards, and on earth a glorious fame for ages.”
Laurence O’Toole, son of the chief of Imaile, became Arch bishop of Dublin in 11(32. He was the first of its bishops who did not go to Canterbury for consecration, and thence forth the custom was entirely abandoned. Though connected with an Irish sept, which long warred fiercely against the English of the Pale, Archbishop O’Toole worked harmoniously with Strongbow, Fitzstephen, and Raymond Le Gros, who co-operated in the enlargement of Christ Church Cathedral, the erection of the choir, the steeple, and two chapels. It was in this church that the remains of Strongbow, the “ proud invader,” were peacefully laid with the Church’s blessing. This Irish prelate also assisted Cardinal Yivian. as legate at a council in Dublin, in 1177, confirming the King of England in his rights to the sovereignty of Ireland. And he afterwards went to Rome, where he obtained a Bull from the Pope, subjecting not only Glendalough, but Kildare, Ferns, Leighlin, and Ossory, to his metropolitan authority. But not being sufficiently tractable in the hands of his Royal Master, he was banished to Normandy, where he died in a monastery. He was soon after canonized, and became the patron saint of the diocese. This native prelate must have been a great troubler of the Pale, for he is said to have sent
D
34 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
nearly 200 of his clergy to Rome to seek the Pope’s absolu tion for the sin of incontinence.
In the interminable warfare carried on between the settlers and the natives, men of the same faith, worshipping \vith the same forms, and often led and instigated on both sides by bishops, abbats, and monks, the country was re duced to such a wretched condition that in 1449, a Parlia ment convened in Dublin enacted that whereas what tenants or husbandmen would not be at truce with the natives, “ they burn, rob, spoil, ami kill, and for the more part the land is wasted and destroyed; and if such rule be holden, not punished, it is like to be the utter destruction and undoing of the land. Therefore it was enacted that as thieves and evil doers increased in great store, it shall be lawful for every Englishman to kill and take notorious robbers found plunder ing by night or day, and that every man who killed or took any such should have for each one penny from every plough- land, and a farthing from every cottage within the barony where the manslaughter was done. The sheriff of the county was ordered to levy the money within one month, and ‘ to deliver it to him who made the homicide.’ “
The Colonial Parliament, in which the Prior of Christ Church always held a seat, passed a law in 1380 that no native should be suffered to profess himself in this institution ; “ an enactment,” says Mr. Gilbert, “ so strictly observed, that, excepting in the reign of James II., no Irishman was ad mitted even as Vicar-Choral of Christ Church until John A. Stevenson was enrolled among the pupils of its music school, late in the eighteenth century.”
So strong was the antipathy of races and the antagonism of the native and Anglican ecclesiastics, that, even at a time when there was a great dearth of ministers, the Anglo-Irish in Dublin not only shut the sanctuary against the natives, and virtually against the worthiest of the Pale, but threw all possible opposition in the way of an appointment by “ pro vision.” “The Church became a close borough ; all healthy competition being set aside, laziness and ignorance resulted. Breeding in and in, transformed into an hereditary priest-
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 35
hood, into a caste, the Anglo-Irish Church promised to be only an eyesore, a scandal to the Church of God.”* My readers must bear in mind that I am writing now of ages when there was no Reformation, no Henry VIII. or Queen Eliza beth, no Protestant penal laws. The gloomy background of the Irish picture which we deplore at the present day, the national animosity, the sectarian bigotry, the chronic dissen sion, the invincible tendency to division, existed 800 years ago in colours darker than at the present time. In fact, the unprejudiced student of Irish history can trace amidst all the wars and revolutions that have troubled this country, a steady progress towards national unity ; and this progress has been greater during the last 300 years than during all the centuries that preceded from the time of St. Patrick to the Reformation.
The see of the metropolis is not the metropolitan see of Ireland. Armagh has long enjoyed that prerogative. It was, however, disputed by Dublin for several centuries, and although the Pope had decided in favour of Armagh, it was not definitely and legally established till the reign of Charles I., when Lord Strafford devoted several days to the investi gation of that long- vexed question and confirmed the decision. The Archbishop of Armagh was declared to be the “ Primate of all Ireland,” and to have the right to raise his crozier in each of the other provinces. Armagh is the Canterbury of Ireland. As St. Austin founded the primatial see of England, so St. Patrick is said to have founded the primatial see of Ireland, and in each case the claims of antiquity have with stood the claims of political power and influence. The Bishop of Dublin, far more than the Bishop of London, played con tinually a part in history as a great State functionary. He was not only honoured with a seat in the King’s privy council in England, where he used to attend his Majesty in many weighty consultations, but also had within his “ Liberties of the Cross,” or his own Church lands, the rights of a prince palatine, with the power of even condemning to death cri minals offending therein, for whose execution a gallows was * Father Malone.
D2
36 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
erected at Harold’s Cross. His seneschal, down to a recent period, held a court, adjoining which was a gaol for confining debtors. He had the regulation of the police in the manor or liberty surrounding his palace of St. Sepulchre, and like wise the right of a market in Patrick-street. But these were small matters to him. In many cases the Archbishop of Dublin was the Grand Justiciary or Lord Deputy of the English monarch, and sometimes led, in that capacity, the military forces of the Pale against “ the Irish Enemy.”
Christ Church was governed by the Prior of the Augus- tinians, under monastic rules (which were not very strictly observed), from the year 1103 to 1538, when King Henry VIII. issued a commission to inquire into the condition of this church among others, and in pursuance of the recom mendation of the commissioners, and with the consent of the prior and canons, he changed the constitution of the cathedral, making the canons secular, with a dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, and six vicars-choral, together with four boys called choristers. By an instrument dated 12th December, 1539, the King acknowledged Christ Church as the archiepiscopal seat or see, and the second metropolitan church in Ireland. Robert Paynswick, the prior, was ap pointed first dean, with the rectory of Glasiievin for his prebend. The sub-prior became first precentor, with the rectory of Balgriffin. The seneschal and precentor of the convent was made chancellor, and received the parish of Kilcullen ; the sub-precentor and sacrist of the convent was appointed treasurer, with Balscadan for his prebend. Four of the other canons of the convent were made vicars-choral. In 1541, the King granted a charter under the Great Seal, and added two other canons of the convent to the vicars- choral. By this charter, the dean, dignitaries, and vicars- choral were incorporated by the name of the “ Dean and Chapter of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Dublin.”
In 1521 Hugh Inge succeeded to the see by the Pope’s appointment. He was followed in 1528 by John Allen, who had been chaplain to Cardinal Wolsey, and had been an active agent in the dissolution of English monasteries. He
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 37
Was, however, confirmed in this see by the Pope. His end was tragic. Having rendered himself obnoxious to the Geraldines, the archbishop, betrayed by a pilot when try ing to escape, was stranded near Clontarf and murdered. “Feeble from age and sickness, kneeling in his shirt and mantle, bequeathing his soul to God, his body to the traitors’ mercy, he was brutally murdered in the presence of Lord Thomas, commonly known as ‘Silken Thomas,’ who had just renounced his allegiance, exasperated by the false report of his father’s execution in the Tower of London.”
Allen was the last of the Papal archbishops of Dublin. He was succeeded by George Brown, Provincial of the Augustinians in London, who had distinguished himself by preaching the doctrines of the Reformation, and was on that account selected for the chief post of the Anglo-Irish Church. He was elected on the King’s special recommendation by the Chapters of Christ Church and St. Patrick’s, and invested with a pall, and consecrated by Archbishop Cranmer and two other English bishops. The King rebuked him sharply for not being sufficiently zealous in his affairs. He took the scolding with great humility, “acknowledging his bounden duty to his lordship’s goodwill, next to his Saviour Christ, for the place of which he now possessed,” and continued to enjoy the royal favour to the end. He had a very difficult task, but he laboured incessantly to root out all that the Pope had planted in the portion of the vineyard committed to his care, and throughout the land generally. He was succeeded by Hugh Curwen, who had been Chaplain to Queen Mary, and who was consecrated in St. Paul’s, London, according to the Roman Pontifical. He was zealous in the restoration of Roman Catholic worship in all its pomp ; but when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, Curwen “accommodated his conduct and conscience to the policy of his new sovereign, and her liberal favour was his recompence.” His successor, Adam Loftus, had been appointed in 1562, at the age of twenty-eight, to succeed Archbishop Dowdall in the see of Armagh, and was consecrated by Hugh, archbishop of Dub lin, about the close of that year. “Consequently,” Harris
38 IRELAND AND HKH CHUltCHES.
remarks, “ the Irish Protestant bishops derived their succes sion through him without any pretence of blemish, or open for cavil, for lie was consecrated by Curwen, who had been consecrated in England, according to the forms of the Roman Pontifical, in the third year of Queen Mary.”
On Easter Sunday, 1551, the Liturgy in the English lan guage was read for the first time at Christ Church, in presence of the Lord Deputy St. Leger, Archbishop Brown, and the Mayor of Dublin. On the accession of Mary, the Roman Catholic worship was reinstated, but in 1559 it was again suppressed by Elizabeth. On the 13th of August in that year, the Earl of Sussex, Lord Deputy, came to Christ Church, where he was sworn in, and the Te Dcum was sung in English, at which the trumpets sounded. In January following the Parliament sat in that church, when it passed the Act of Uniformity and several other laws. This year orders were sent to Thomas Lockwood, Dean of Christ Church, to remove out of his church all Popish relics and images, and to paint and whiten it anew, putting sentences of Scripture on the walls in lieu of pictures or other the like fancies; which orders were observed, and men set to work accordingly on the 25th of May, 1559. Dr. Heath, Arch bishop of York, sent to the two Deans and Chapters of Dublin, viz., of Christ Church and St. Patrick’s, a large Bible to each, “ to be placed in the middle of their quiers ; which two Bibles, on their first setting up to the public view, caused a great resort of people thither on purpose to read therein.”
Thus we see how naturally and gradually, and with how little change, even in form, the Anglican Church of the Pale became the Irish branch of the United Church of England and Ireland. She had only to extend her borders and strengthen her stakes. Her spirit was still absolutely the same— English, Colonial, Anti-Irish, grasping, domineering, and unpopular. The weapons of her warfare were carnal, and she rested upon the sword of England for her defence against the Irish enemy, which she would force to con form, but cared not to conciliate or instruct— this same
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 39
Irish enemy, being all that war, famine, and pestilence had spared of that same old Church of St. Patrick with which her modern advocates would strive to make her identical.
It is in the face of these glaring historical facts that one of them writes as follows: — “She is, indeed, the same — the identical Church that has occupied the spiritual territory ever since Christianity was introduced, by the grace of God, into these highly-favoured islands, but it is maintained that, since the Reformation, she has become a purer, a holier, and a more scriptural Church. It may as well be said that a person afflicted with the plague is not the same identical individual, when the skill of the physician has expelled the malady from his frame, and restored him to the health and strength he had formerly enjoyed. He is, no doubt, the same identical individual, but a sounder, a healthier, and a stronger man.” ‘‘The two bishops, Leverous and Walsh, who refused to concur with their brethren in purifying the national Church, did not, however, ordain any bishops for the Romish party, and thus served, by this negative act, to cut off entirely from the Pope the old episcopal succession; and, therefore, the bishops and clergy of the Established Church, in the present day, and they only are the lineal successors of the bishops and clergy of the Reformation, and through them, of those who introduced Christianity into Ireland in the fifth century. They alone, too, have a just and rightful claim to the tithes, ecclesiastical estates, cathedrals, and churches, which their predecessors had enjoyed from time immemorial, and which were never in the possession of the present troublesome and ever-encroaching Romish sect that has been so long creating such turbulence and, disaffection in the country. In fact, the State did little more than merely to continue those bishops with their clergy in posses sion of the property which they had enjoyed previous to the improvements that they had been instrumental in efj’ect- ing in the doctrines and discipline of the national Church.”*
It was easy for the conquerors of the native chiefs, abbats,
* “ The Church of Ireland before the Reformation,” &c. By the Rev. Thomas W. Roe,
40 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and people to take possession of the tithes, ecclesiastical estates, cathedrals, and churches, but not so easy to convert those who were despoiled; nor to remove the plague of un godliness from the extended Church of the Pale. It is not every member of a corporation who has the moral courage to expose fallacies and delusions calculated to sustain its exclusive privileges and profitable monopolies. This credit is due to the Rev. Dr. Todd, who has dug a pit into which the Patrician secessionists have all descended. In virtue of that succession they claim the tithes. But the tithe system was introduced into Ireland by the foreign settlers in the twelfth century. The .succession itself is but a shadow conjured up by the imagination. Dr. Todd lias demon strated that the clan-church perished under the repeated blows of England. When the desolating storm of persecu tion abated, Rome gathered in and organized the scattered remnants of the population, and gave them pastors. Eliza beth’s “Establishment” got everything but the people — the property, the buildings, the dignity, and worldly state; and to the present hour the people are alienated.
We can see from all this how futile is the argument in
C5
favour of the rights of the Established clergy derived from records of consecrations and episcopal successions in the several sees. The argument assumes that spiritual au thority, — the right to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments, depends on the authenticity of those records, and on the infallible proof that the Holy Ghost was imparted to the existing bishops by other bishops, who had received the same divine gift in an unbroken line from St. Patrick. That foundation may serve for a Hierarchy, but it will not do for Christianity. Its greatest enemy could not wish to place it in a worse position, if he wanted it to be swept away by the tide of rationalism. There is, however, a beneficed clergyman in the Irish Church who has boldly denounced this pretended succession of the Anglican bishops from |t. Patrick, as “the most impudent falsehood in all This fiction having been solemnly put forth as truth by the Archdeacon of Dublin, Dr. Lee; Professor of
I
REVIEW OF THE PAST, 41
Divinity in the Dublin University, in the sermon preached at the consecration of Archbishop Trench, the Rev. Dr. Brady came forward to refute the learned dignitary, in a pamphlet which bears the following title: — “ The Alleged Conversion of the Irish Bishops to the Eeformed Religion, at the Accession of Queen Elizabeth; and the Assumed Descent of the Present Established Hierarchy in Ireland from the Ancient Irish Church, disproved:” by W. Maziere Brady, D.D., Vicar of Donoghpatrick and Rector of Kilberry, Diocese of Meath, and formerly Chaplain to the Earls of Clarendon, St. Germans, and Carlisle, Lords Lieutenant of Ireland, Author of “Clerical and Parochial Records of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross;” “Remarks on the Irish Church Tempo ralities,” &c., &:c.
Dr. Brady states in his preface that, “ in collecting mate rials for the ‘ Clerical and Parochial Records of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross/ the writer was necessarily engaged, for many years, in examining the published works and unpublished archives relating to the Reformation period, and could not fail to remark that no documentary evidence was forth coming to verify the received opinions touching the asserted conversion of the Irish bishops and the descent of the Reformed episcopate from the ancient Irish Church. “ It would be an unmanly and almost a dishonest course on the part of the writer to conceal the facts thus ascertained and allow the stereotyped assertions to be any longer employed, without refutation, as weapons of party warfare. If the Church in Ireland is to be preserved, that cannot be done by. stifling and suppressing the truth, and it is better that an admission of error should come from within the Church itself than that the charge of its being upheld by falsehood should be hurled against it, with more damaging force, by hostile hands. Under these circumstances the author hopes he may be pardoned for the part he now takes in contradicting what has been described to him, by perhaps the highest living authority, as ‘THE MOST IMPUDENT FALSE HOOD IN ALL HISTORY.’ “
Archdeacon Lee, Archdeacon Martin, and others have
42 IRELAND AND HEll CHURCHES.
replied to Dr. Brady, labouring to prove that the Irish bishops accepted the Book of Common Prayer for the Mass- Book, and took the oath of allegiance to Elizabeth as the head of the Church, and thus became legitimate channels of Divine grace, streaming from the Apostles through the Popes and St. Patrick — although the primatial see was occu pied for 200 years by laymen — and the records of the middle ao-es must have passed miraculously through a thousand conflagrations.
It is strange that a writer so sober-minded as Bishop Mant should have been carried away by this Irish Sucession delusion. The fact is thus referred to in a note by Mr. Froude : — “ I cannot but express my astonishment at a proposition maintained by Bishop Mant and others, that the whole Hierarchy of Ireland went over to the Reformation with the Government. Dr. Mant discovers that the Bishop of Kildare and the Bishop of Meath were deprived for refusing the oath of supremacy. The rest, he infers, must have taken the oath because they remained in their places. The English Government, unfortunately for themselves, had no such opportunity as Dr. Mant’s argument supposes for the exercise of their authority. The Archbishop of Dublin, the Bishops of Meath and Kildare, were alone under English jurisdiction. When Adam Loftus was made Archbishop of Armagh, the Primacy became titulary Protestant. But Loftus resided in Dublin, the see was governed by a bishop in communion with the Pope — and the latter and riot the former, was regarded in Ireland, even by the correspondents of the English Government, as the lawful possessor of the see. “ In a survey of the country supplied to Cecil in 1571, after death and deprivation had enabled the Government to fill several sees with English nominees, the Archbishops of Armagh, Tuam, and Cashel, with almost every one of the bishops of the respective provinces, are described as ‘ Catho- Ucl et Confoederati: The Archbishop of Dublin, with the Bishops of Kildare, Ossory, and Ferns, are alone reckoned as ‘ Protestants.’ “*
* Vol. x., p. 481.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 4o
Mr. Froude gives in his text plenty of facts to show how worthless the conformity of the bishops was, if it were proved a hundred times over. Even in the cities of the Pale, Don Diego Ortiz could see in the people two virtues — “fidelity to the Catholic Church and hatred of the English.” They all look to Spain, he said, “ to deliver them from English tyranny, to save their souls, and give them back the blessed Mass. The Mass, indeed, they everywhere still use in their own houses. In. Yougbal there are yet two monasteries, a Franciscan and a Dominican. The friars are much troubled by the English. When their persecutors are in the neighbourhood they emigrate to the mountains, or hide in their cellars. When the coast is clear again they return to their houses. Everywhere, both in the cities and in the country, there is a universal desire for the appearance of a Spanish Armada to deliver them from slavery, and to restore their churches to them. There is an English pro verb in use among them, which says —
u ‘ He who would England win, In Ireland must begin.’ “
“ The English Government had added largely to their dif ficulties by attempting to force the Reformation on Ireland, while its political and social condition was still unsettled. Of the prelates who were in possession of their sees at Elizabeth’s accession, the Archbishop of Dublin, who had changed with every change, undoubtedly gave his counte nance to the revolution. The Bishops of Meath and Kildare refused, and were deprived ; and there is 110 evidence that any other bishop in all Ireland, who was in office at Queen Mary’s death, either accepted the Reformed Prayer-Book, or abjured the authority of the Pope. But for the question of religion the towns would have been loyal, for their pros perity depended on the maintenance of order, while the native chiefs, however turbulent, would never have seriously desired to transfer their allegiance to Spain, for Philip, they
44 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
well knew, would have been as intolerant of anarchy as the English Viceroy at Dublin. The suppression of the Catholic service, enforced wherever the English had power, and hanging before the people as a calamity sure to follow as the limits of that power were extended, created a weight of animosity which no other measure could have produced, and alone, perhaps, made the problem of Irish administration hopelessly insoluble. Notwithstanding the fair speeches of the Mayor of Waterford, neither that city nor any other in Ireland, except Dublin, would receive an English garrison within their walls. When they admitted the English Prayer-Boole, it was with a reluctance which was nowhere concealed. A strong fort, armed and garrisoned, stood at the mouth of the Waterford river, but it was held, as the inhabitants significantly pointed out to Philip’s commis sioners, for the town, and not for the Queen.”*
Mr. Froude remarks that “the intrusive religion was not recommended by the brilliancy of its moral influences ;” and the consequences of intruding it were most deplorable. “ The spiritual disorganization of the country was even more desperate than the social. Whatever might have been the other faults of the Irish people, they had been at least eminent for their piety. The multitude of churches and monasteries which in their ruins meet everywhere the stranger’s eye, witness conclusively to their possession of this single virtue ; for the religious houses in such a state of society could not have existed at all unless protected by the consenting reverence of the whole population. But the religious houses were gone, and the prohibition of the Mass had closed the churches except in districts which were in armed and open rebellion. For many years over the greater part of Ireland public worship was at an end. The Reformed clergy could not venture beyond the coast towns, and in these they were far from welcome. The priests continued to confess and administer the sacraments, but it was in the chiefs’ castles, or at stations in the mountain glens, to scanty * Vol. x., p. 482.
HE VIEW OF THE PAST. 45
and scattered families, and the single restraint upon the passions of the people was fast disappearing/’ “ The bridges, the special charge of the religious orders, fell into ruins. The chiefs took possession of the Church lands, the churches fell in and went to ruin, and the unfortunate country seemed lapsing into total savagery. . . The English settlers every where became worse than the Irish in all the qualities in which the Irish were most in fault. No Celt hated England more bitterly than the transported Saxon. The forms of English justice might be introduced, but juries combined to defeat the ends for which they were instituted, and every one in authority, English or Irish, preferred to rule after the Irish system.”*
Such are the stern realities of history. Elizabeth’s refor mation began by utterly destroying the native churches, and utterly demoralizing the people. How different from the rose-coloured pictures so complacently presented by prelates, dignitaries, and other champions of the Establishment in our day, who describe the bishops, clergy, and people as quietly transferring their allegiance to the Queen, and making them selves her willing instruments in purifying the Church, restoring it to its primitive simplicity, and almost unani mously casting off the galling yoke of the Pope ! It is astonishing to what an extent these gross perversions of Irish history, made by men who ought to know better, or who, knowing better, ought to have more regard for truth — have deluded the clergy as well as the laity — so powerful is the effect of the constant reiteration of falsehood. But truth is mightier than falsehood ; and when the truth prevails, as prevail it must in the end, woe to the institution whose main defence has been systematic misrepresentation !
Since the foregoing sheets were sent to press, I have been favoured by the Rev. Dr. Lee, Rector of Ahoghill, with another pamphlet “ On the Irish Episcopal Succession,” in reply to Mr. Froude and Dr. Brady, which deserves some notice here. Dr. Lee deserves credit for several things — for the great ability with which he writes, for the thoroughness * Froude, vol. x., pp. 534-5.
4(3 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and honesty with which he carries out his principles, and for his abstinence from vituperation in dealing with opponents. This latter quality he perhaps owes mainly to the feet that, as an Englishman, he is exempt from the instinct of Irish Protestant ascendancy, which is apt to generate a very arroo-ant and insolent sort of intolerance— offensive in proportion to the feebleness of the writer or speaker. Dr. Lee may have succeeded in convicting Dr. Brady of error, and Mr. Froude of “romance.” A majority of the Marian bishops may have outwardly conformed, when Elizabeth, in her short and incisive way of ending disputes about religion, put the alternative before them, “ Sign or resign”- “ swear or quit ;” and it is possible that a couple of those Irish bishops assisted Archbishop Curwen in consecrating the bishops whom Queen Elizabeth subsequently appointed. I will not trouble my readers with the bewildering argu ments about the succession to the several Irish sees, because they have nothing to do with the real question at issue. That many of them did submit to the Queen’s supremacy, and in words repudiated the Pope, there is no question. But for what purpose \ That they might betray the Government and alienate the property of the Church. For this, no doubt, they could easily have got the Pope’s dispensation, and per haps a plenary indulgence into the bargain. And they would have done what the Queen required the more readily, because they then daily expected the news of her assassination or deposition, to make way for Mary Queen of Scots, who was determined to restore the Catholic worship in Ireland, and follow in the footsteps of her royal namesake. Of the object of the temporary conformity, however, Dr. Lee gives the most convincing proofs, though overshadowed with the big capitals in which he prints the portions of his citations which record the simple fact of signing or swearing. Thus Archbishop Bramhall, in a work vindicating the consecration of Pro testant bishops, asserts that “the old bishops complied and held their places, and joined in such ecclesiastical acts (as consecration), until they had made away to their kindred all the land belonging to their sees” Cox, in his “ History
EEVIEW OF THE PAST. 47
of Ireland,” says — “ The very Popish, bishops did assist at the consecration of most of the Protestant bishops, and com plied with the Government and kept their sees until they had sacrilegiously betrayed the Church and alienated much of its possessions.” With this agrees the testimony of another of Dr. Lee’s witnesses, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who, in a sermon preached at the funeral of Archbishop Bramhall, remarked : — “At the Reformation the Popish bishops and priests seemed to conform, and did so — that, keeping their bishoprics, they might enrich their kindred and dilapidate the revenues of the Church.”
To an ordinary reader of the Bible — to any unsophisticated Christian mind, the duplicity, perjury, fraud, robbery, and sacrilege here charged against the conforming Marian bishops might seem to render them incapable, by the imposition of their hands on the heads of men of another faith, which they believed to be heresy — of conveying the Holy Ghost, of remitting and retaining sins, and the other divine gifts with which Anglican bishops are believed to be invested. But what do Dr. Lee and his fellow-champions of the Irish Establishment think of this ? Nothing ! They pooh-pooh it. Indeed, in reading over their pamphlets, one might suppose that they are in the position of the disciples of John the Baptist mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, who had not so much as heard whether there Avas a Holy Ghost. Yet they ought not to have forgotten the words in. the service for the Consecration of Bishops, in the use of which the sacrilegious church-robbers said to Elizabeth’s nominees, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost by the imposition of our hands,” &c. But Dr. Lee does not shrink from any revolting con sequences of this kind. He boldly pushes his Church principles to their ultimate results. Granted that the Marian bishops were as black as the traitor Judas — no matter, argues this learned divine. “ The baptism of Judas was as valid as the baptism of St. Peter — and the laying on of hands in episcopal ordination of the very meanest of the Marian bishops would, on the principles of true Catholic antiquity, make as valid a bishop as any consecrated
48 IRELAND AND HKll CHURCHES.
under the great dome of St. Peter by the Bishop of Rome
himself.”
Why did not Dr. Lee mention consecration instead of baptism, in connexion with the name of Judas, since the matter in hand was the apostolic succession? But this does not affect the argument ; and one cannot avoid wondering at the complacency with which he accepts the Irish episcopal succession as a succession of Judases, and how readily he grants that the Pope is the legitimate successor of the Apostle Peter. A natural inference from this admission would be, that Dr. Lee and his brethren of the Irish Estab lishment would regard all Roman Catholic bishops and priests as lawfully consecrated and ordained, and as possess- in “• the true succession. The United Church indeed admits
o
this; for when priests are converted in Ireland, and join the ministry of the Establishment, they are never re-ordained. It would be the same with bishops if any of them conformed. They would not be re-consecrated ; and if Cardinal Cullen cast off the Pope, and accepted the Queen’s supremacy, exchanging the purple for lawn slieves, he might be installed as Lord Primate of all Ireland without any of our bishops presuming to lay hands again on his consecrated head.
On this point Dr. Lee makes a distinction of which he should have the benefit. “Our Church,” he says, “holds that the great head of the Church is the only fountain of ministerial authority, and that by the law of the Church Universal all bishops lawfully ordained are equally sharers in that duly transmitted authority. Once having rightly received episcopal orders, the bishop has thereby received power to exercise the episcopal functions in. all parts of the world; but he has not received uutltority to do so. In this lies the difference between mission and jurisdiction. No one but a bishop can convey episcopal orders, and by the laws of this realm, no one but its tiovereiyn can rightly give authority to any bishop to exercise his functions within its borders.” There is a degree of caution in the wording of this passage, which may be accounted for by the fact, that the author exercises his own ministry in a parish where he
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 49
is surrounded by Presbyterians, who are authorized bv the sovereign of thu realm, their endowment having been origi nally a Regiuni Donmn. He does not affirm that bishops are exclusively the sharers in the Divine authority to minister in the Christian Church, and instead of saying that no one but a bishop can confer “holy orders,” lie declares the truism that no one but a bishop can confer “ episcopal orders,” However, he asserts broadly, again and again, that no minister of CHRIST can officiate lawfully in any country without being placed in a diocese or parish by the sovereign of that country. He goes so far as to aftinn that the bishop of Rome could not perform his functions lawfully without the warrant of the emperor. It is the civil power, accord ing to him, (or rather the sovereign, excluding legislatures and republican presidents) which alone can give the minister of God authority or jurisdiction, or enable him to do any ministerial act lawfully in any nation of Christendom. Without the embrace of secular power the Church is barren; nay, she is an intruder, an interloper, a nuisance, leading a sort of gipsy life in defiance of all law and order. “Such persons,” he says, p. 11, “even though appointed by the Pope, could not be regarded as loyal or as lawful possessors of any spiritual preferment within the realm.” But if ap pointed to his see by the Queen, or the King, that is, “ by- lawful authority, then by whatever bishop he may have been consecrated he is a legitimate link in the episcopal succession of the Church in which he holds a see, and is competent to carry on the continuity of that branch in the which he is placed” — (p. 21).
There is a great deal more to the same effect, the sum of which is — that if a bishop is consecrated by three other bishops, who can trace their orders up through all the links of succession for 1,800 years till they come to the Apostles, then the said bishop has received the HOLY GHOST, and the power to preach, to baptize, to ordain, to consecrate, to remit and retain sins, and to give others the right to do so ; but then the Divine Person, which he bears about with him — the Person who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and
50 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
is truly God — remains inactive, dormant, and can never lawfully put forth His almighty energies, until some earthly sovereign, moved perhaps by the lowest of human passions, is pleased to give the bishop an appointment and a local jurisdiction. Without the touch of the royal sceptre, the bishop or priest is impotent. The Holy Spirit, which bloweth where it listeth, cannot act, say the Anglicans, without royal licence ; or if lie does act, his acts are null and void. But let the sovereign give a see to any man, who has been consecrated, and so received the Holy Ghost, then that man may retain this Divine power, and dispense at will its wondrous gifts, though he be in heart an. apostate from the faith, though his soul be steeped in vice, though his hands be defiled with corruption, or stained with guilty blood. “The Apostolic ministry,” says “Dr. Lee, “flows on, age after age, in the channels of Christ’s appointment, and receives no taint or stain from the evil character of any, who, for the time, are the human instruments by which it is preserved and continued amongst men”- — (p. 20).
But those channels must be the dioceses and parishes of an Established Church, in strict subjection to the State. Archdeacon \Vordsworth wrote a letter to Dr. Lee supporting him in these astounding positions, and it is published in this pamphlet. The Archdeacon says — “ Suppose them all (the Marian bishops) to have been hypocrites, like Judas, this has nothing to do with the question of succession, which depends on official qualifications, not on personal desert!’
The proposition which Dr. Lee has laboured so hard to maintain, and in which he is supported by his namesake, Archdeacon Lee, and many of the ablest of the Irish clergy, is fraught with consequences which they may regard lightly, but which are very serious in the estimation of the Protestants of the United Kingdom. First, the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland and Ulster, though paid by the State, are not true ministers of Christ, and have no authority to preach the Gospel, not being episcopally ordained. The Queen is the head of the Scotch Established Church, and is repre sented at the General Assembly ; but this does not avail.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 51
because their orders are not in the Apostolic channel. Hence they have not the Holy Spirit, and their sacraments are all null and void. Second, the Episcopal Church of Scotland is in the same unhappy predicament, inasmuch as the bishops have received no jurisdiction from the Sovereign. It is true that the Archbishop of Canterbury lately went among the members, and said they were the only true repre sentatives of the Anglican Church in that realm ; but still, according to Dr. Lee, they are unlawful ministers. They may have dormant power, but they have no authority. Third, we now approach, with awe, a for more serious consequence. Suppose, which is not impossible, that, a few years hence, the Irish Church should, by Act of Parliament, signed by the Sovereign, be separated from the State. From that moment, according to Dr. Lee’s theory, the Spirit of God would cease to act in her bishops and clergy. They would, ipso facto, become unlawful ministers — intruders, without authority or jurisdiction — and for them the channels of Divine grace would be for ever dried up. They would be in the same woful predicament in which they now, with scant sympathy, behold the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland, vainly fancying that their Church has been adminis tering the means of grace to the mass of the people for the last three hundred years, and all because they did not change the Pope’s supremacy for the headship of the daughter of Anne Boleyn.
Archdeacon Wordsworth expresses a benevolent wish that “the schism in Ireland were healed, and that the two episcopal successions in that country could be fused into one. That blessed result would not be far distant if the present Irish Roman Catholics would do what was clone by those Marian bishops, whose consistency is so much eulogised by Dr. Brady, namely, if they would renounce the Pope’s usurped supremacy, and acknowledge that of Christ himself, as the one supreme Head of the Church, in the sense of the 37th Article.” Surely the Archdeacon must know that no such fusion could take place. Dr. Lee could have set him right on that point, and have told him that the Irish sees
E2
5:2 IRELAND AND HKIl (“MrrHCHES.
being all full, there is no room for more. But it must he confessed that the Archdeacon is not very exacting. He does not want the Church of Rome in Ireland to change doctrines— only to change heads— the Pope for the Queen ; and certainlv in a worldly sense, those who accepted the British sovereign would have the better bargain, for the poor Pope may now say with the Apostle whom he professes to succeed, “Silver and gold have I none.”
Dr. Lee has taxed his ingenuity in constructing genea logical tables, by which he tries to connect Archbishop Cnrwen bv seven or eight lines with the bishops of the old Irish Church. These lines are as speculative as the parochial boundaries which Archbishop Whately imagined to be drawn on a map of China, which he said would represent as real an interest as the Establishment then had in large districts of Ireland, except the tithes, which were at that time unpaid. But Dr. Lee might have drawn 700 lines, instead of seven, to the head of Curwen on the same principle ; for many Irish bishops of the old Church had wandered to England during the middle ages, and nt if/If- have taken part in the consecra tion of English bishops, who -ntujlit have taken part in the consecration of some of the bishops who consecrated the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin. But what would the succession cause gain by this? Nothing, because there were no diocesan bishops in the ancient Irish Church, and they Could not transmit orders they had never received, and which they would have repudiated. As we have already seen, there were several “ bishops,” often in the same town, or village, the title bein<>- a simple clerical designation as
ox o
Dr. Todd has demonstrated. It is a curious fact that Dr. Lee does not make the slightest reference to his “ Life of St. Patrick,” or to prove any real connexion between the monastic churches originally founded on the clan system — churches which were as numerous as the clans — and the Establishment founded by Elizabeth on the ruins of that system. He also keeps quite clear of the succession in Armagh, the Primatial See, where, if anywhere, the line should be traced. The adroit controversialist was, no doubt,
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 58
aware that the Armagh see wa.s in the hands of laymen fora period nearly as long as the duration of the Elizabethan Church in Ireland. How shall we account for the fact that so many able and learned men keep hammering at the Elizabethan titles, and showering pamphlets over the land, for the purpose of proving that the Church of Christ is con fined to the narrow bounds of an established ministry, and that a kingdom which He declared was not of this world, cannot exist without being of this world — without being wrought by human laws into the framework of civil society — where it is to be for ever more embedded and confined ? Can it be accounted for otherwise than by the fact that in this political framework there are rectorships, deaneries, archdeaneries, and bishoprics ‘{ As to the arguments about the episcopal succession, they do not touch the real question, and serve only to puzzle the writers and bewilder their readers, “ who find no end, in wondering mazes lost.” The practical effect of the whole is well expressed in one of Mr. Charles Ross’s “Merry Conceits” : —
“ The wisest old man that ever was known
In the famous Wiseacre nation, Sat up all night with his head in a sling, To make this calculation: —
If Tom’s father was John’s son,
But John’s son hadn’t a father, What would John’s son have done,
If Tom’s son’s father wouldn’t rather?
He worked all night and he worked all day,
Till he came to this conclusion, That Tom’s son’s father’s father’s son
W as the cause of much confusion.”
The common sense view of the matter is the one which his tory presents. The native Irish had always a clergy of one kind or other. First, in the historic period the Druids ; then the abbats, monks, professors, and teachers, trained and appointed by St. Patrick and his fellow missionaries, forming a church which, after existing in independence for seven or eight him-
54 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
drecl years, was flightly modified by Roman elements intro duced by the Anglican clergy established in tlie Pale, and gradually extending with the English conquest. Lastly, when that conquest was complete, and the monastic institutions, which were the nurseries of the ministry, were destroyed, the pastoral work was done as best it could be, by an imperfectly organized priesthood, which persecution compelled to be clandestine and contraband, except during the time that the Stuarts were on the throne. The river of national religion flowed on from age bo age, obstructed by the strife of races, by the revolution of which Henry VI. II. and Elizabeth were the chief instruments, by the subsequent civil wars, by the Penal Code, — and forced from its natural bed into irregular streams, pools, dykes, swamps, and bogs, i-iit it worked slowly through all impediments, and at length gradually wore a channel for itself beside the ecclesiastical canal which England had. constructed at so much cost. The canal was often nearly dry, and is now no fuller tliau it was at first. The river has been increasing in volume and in the force of its current from age to age, and now contains ten times more water than the canal, because it has its springs from the native mountains, valleys, and bogs, while the royal canal, though purer, has been fed only from the reservoir of the colony. All the pamphlets that ever earned mitres would not con vince the Irish that the royal canal is the national river, or that it has a holier source.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 55
CHAPTER III.
IT appears to me that some knowledge of the history of the Irish Presbyterians, and of their relations, is necessary to a right understanding of the case of Ireland. Certainly so large and powerful a section of the community — enlightened, loyal, and Bible-loving Protestants — ought to receive some considera tion before finally deciding the questions at issue with regard to Church. James I. commenced his reign hi Ireland with a policy of conciliation. He proclaimed a gonerai pardon to all who were concerned in the late rebellions, and restored to their former possessions those who had not boen attainted. The natives were admitted to the privileges of subjects, and were placed in all respects 011 an equality with English residents. Regular courts of assize were re-established in the southern provinces, after being in abeyance for two centuries, and they were for the first time introduced into Ulster. But the gunpowder plot in England having excited his alarm about foreign emissaries, some of whom had been found plotting in Ireland, he refused all public countenance to the Roman Catholic religion in this country. In con sequence of this, some of the northern chiefs to whom he had secured their estates, and on whom he had conferred titles of nobility, entered into a conspiracy against his government, and applied to the courts of France and Spain for aid to overthrow it. The plot was discovered before it was ripe for execution; its chief promoters, the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, fled in dismay, and shortly after O’Dogherty, another rebel leader, was slain. Their estates were forfeited, with those of others implicated in the con spiracies; and the consequence was, that about half a million acres in Ulster were placed at the disposal of the Crown. This province having been the principal seat of the rebel lions against Elizabeth, and the inhabitants, the most tur bulent in the country, having been reduced to a miserable
56 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
remnant by the devastations of civil war and famine, James resolved to “ plant “ it with English and Scotch settlers. Nothing could be more deplorable than the condition of Ulster at that time, as described by contemporary historians. With the exception of a few fortified cities, its towns and villages had been levelled to the ground, and scarcely any buildings remained, save the castles occupied by the English, and the mud cabins of the natives. Immense woods and extensive marshes covered a large portion of the country, relieved only by occasional patches in bad cultivation. The proprietors, beggared by the wars, were unable to employ labour; while many of the people betook themselves to the woods, living there like savages, and supporting themselves by plunder. Divine Service had not been performed for years together in any parish church throughout Ulster, except in the principal towns. It was under these circum stances that the king resolved upon the scheme which has been generally known as “The Plantation of Ulster,” and which was carried out by Sir Arthur Ohichestcr, who was appointed L >rd Deputy in Iu05. The forfeited estates, having been carefully surveyed, were allotted to three classes of persons: — British undertakers, who voluntarily engaged in the enterprise; servitors of the Crown, consisting of civil and military officers; and natives whom it was expected this confidence and liberality would render loyal subjects. The lands were divided into three proportions of 2,000, 1,500, and 1,000 acres. Those Avho obtained the largest were each bound within four years to build a castle and “bawii,” and and to plant forty-eight able men eighteen years old or upwards, of English or Scottish descent. Those of the second class were each obliged to build a strong stone or brick house within two years; and the third a bawn, with a house of less value; each class being obliged to plant a due proportion of British families, and to have their houses furnished with arms for their defence. The result was the settlement in the country of 144 English and Scotch “under takers,” 5U “ servitors,” and 280 “ natives,” who gave bonds to the State for the fulfilment of the covenants! and who
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 57
were required to render an account of their progress in carry ing on the plantation. The chief undertakers were the London companies, who obtained nearly the whole of the county of Londonderry, on condition of their building and fortify ing the cities of Londonderry and Coleraine, and otherwise expending £20,000 on the plantation. Sir Arthur Chichester, however, obtained the entire neighbouring territory of Ennishowen, with all the manors and rights formerly pos sessed by the O’Doghertys ; but the stringent conditions imposed on the other undertakers were dispensed with, in consequence of which that portion of the county of Donegal presents an unfavourable contrast to the rest of the country even at the present (.lay.
Owing to the vicinity of Scotland, and the enterprising
O */ I i”~»
character of its people, the greater part of the settlers came from that country, and occupied the north-eastern side of the province, whence they spread themselves over the re moter districts, while the southern and western counties were chiefly occupied by the English. The decayed and almost deserted towns were now rapidly replenished with inhabitants, the lands were gradually cleared of the woods, houses were erected throughout the cultivated country, new towns were built and incorporated, and in every direction proofs were given of industry, order, and peace, disturbed only by the marauding incursions of the natives, who issued from their fastnesses in the woods. It is stated, for example, that “Sir Toby Caulfield’s people w^ere driven every night to lay up all his cattle as it were in ward ; and do he a.nd his what they could, the woolfe and the wood-kerne within culiver-sliot of his forte had often times a share.” Even in the English pale “Sir John King and Sir Henry Harrington, within half a mile of Dublin, had to do the like, for those fore-named enemies did every night survey the fields to the very walls.” Of the English, as one of the settlers, a Presbyterian minister from Scotland, wrote, “ Not many came over, because, being a great deal more tenderly bred ac home in England, and entertained in better quarters than they could find here in Ireland, they were very unwilling to
58 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
flock hero, except to good land such as they had before at home, or to good cities where they might trade ; both of which in these days were scarce enough here. Besides that, the marshiness ;md fo^giness of this island was still found unwholesome to English bodies more tenderly bred and in better air; so that we have seen in our time multitudes of them die of a flux, called here the country disease, at their first entry. These things were such discouragements, that the new English came but very slowly, and the old English were become no better than the Irish.” The writer adds that the king “had a natural love to have Ireland planted with Scots, as being, beside their loyalty, of a middle temper, between th- English tender, and the Irish rude breeding, rind a ej’eat deal more like to adventure to plant Ulster than theEnglish.it lying far both from tin b native land and
more from their humour, while it lies nigh to Scotland, and the inhabitants not so far from the ancient Scots manners; so that it might be hoped that the Irish untoward living would be n.et bo.;b with c<;ual iinnness, if need be, and be especial! v aJiayed by the example of more civility and Pro testant profession than in iormer times had been among them.” Some great English houses, however, were founded about this time. Sir Hugh Clotworthy obtained the lands of Antrim, Loth fruitful and good, raid invited thither several of the English, “ very good men/’ the Ellises, Leslies, Laiig- fbrds, and others. “ Chichester, a worthy man, had an estate given him in the county of Antrim, where he im proved his interest, built the prospering mart of Belfast, and confirmed his interest in Oarrickfergus, and built a stately palace there. Comva.y had an estate given him in the county of Antrim, and built a town, afterwards called Lis- negarvy (Lisburn), and this was planted with a colony of English also. Moses Hill had woodbinds given him, which being thereafter demolished, left a fair and beautiful country, where a late heir of the Hills built a town called Hills- borough. All these lands and more were given to the English gentlemen, worthy persons, who afterwards increased, and made noble and loyal families, in places where formerly
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 59
had been nothing but robbing, treason, and rebellion. Of the Scots nation there was a family of the Balfours, of the Forbeses, of the Grahams, two of the Stewarts, and not a few of the Hamiltons. The M ‘Donalds founded the earldom of Antrim, the Hamiltons the earldoms of Strabane and Clan- brassil, and there were besides several knights of that name, Sir Frederick, Sir George, Sir Francis, Sir Charles, his son, and Sir Hawk, all Hamiltons, for they prospered above all others in this country, after the first admittance of the Scots into it.” The large tract of country in Down and Antrim formerly possessed by the Irish chief Con O’Neill, whom the Lord-Deputy had incarcerated for treason, and who had been liberated by the ingenuity of his wife, “ a sharp, nimble woman,” with the exception of one-third, which she managed to save for her husband, became the property of Montgomery of Ards, and Hamilton of Claneboy. “ But,” says the historian above quoted, the Rev. Andrew Stewart, “ land without inhabitants is a burden without relief. The Irish were gone, the ground was desolate, rent must be paid to the king, tenants were none to pay them. Therefore the lords having a good bargain themselves, made some of their
o o o
friends sharers, as freeholders under them. Thus came several farmers under Mr. Montgomery, gentlemen from Scotland, and of the names of the Shaws, Calderwopds, Boyds, of the Keiths, from the north, and some foundations were laid for towns and incorporations, &c. These founda tions being laid, the Scots came hither apace, and became tenants willingly and sub-tenants to their countrymen (whose manner and way they knew), so that in a short time the country began again to be inhabited.”
Thus originated the towns of Donaghadee, Newtonards, Grey-abbey, Bangor, Holywood, and Killaleagh. Many of the native Irish were permitted to occupy lands in the midst of the new settlers, and to the great joy of all parties Parliament repealed the odious laws passed to prevent the English inhabitants of the kingdom from intermarrying, or holding any communion, either with the Irish or the Scots. The natives were no longer marked out as the natural
60 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
enemies of the government, whom it was felony to marry, or to employ as nurses. These Presbyterian settlers were subsequently joined by many of the persecuted Puritans from England, and some of them being promoted to bishop rics and other ecclesiastical dignities, they gave a low church temper to the Establishment.
It seems there was much need of this leaven of Puritanism, and of a celebrated revival of religion which followed some time after; for the same candid historian, Stewart, describes a state of tilings more like the morals and manners of the Restoration than those of the Commonwealth. “ From Scotland came many, and from England not a few, yet all of them generally the scum of both nations,, who from debt or breaking, and fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, came hither, hoping to be without fear of man’s justice in a land where there was nothing, or but little yet, of the fear of God. And in a few years there flocked such a multitude of people from Scotland, that these northern counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry, &c., were in a good measure planted, which had been waste before. Yet most of the people were all void of godliness, who seemed rather to nee from God in this enterprise than to follow their own mercy. Albeit, as they cared little for any church, so God seemed to care as little for them.” The writer goes on to state that they were entertained only with the relics of Popery, under a sort of anti-Christian hierarchy, by a number of careless men. “ Thus on all hands atheism increased, iniquity abounded, with contention, fighting, murder, adultery, &c. Their carriage made them to be abhorred at home in their native land, in so much that f/uin(/ for Ireland was looked on as a miserable mark of a deplorable person ; yea, it was turned into a proverb, and one of the worst expressions of disdain that could be invented, was to tell a man that Ireland would be his lunder end.”*
This account is confirmed by other contemporary writers, and it shows that the state of Ulster, as the model province
* ‘^History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.” By J. S. Keid,D.D. \oi. i., p. Ul.
REVIKW OF THE PAST. 61
of Ireland, is not to be ascribed to the superior purity of the stock of men with which it was first planted, but to the religious and moral culture brought to bear upon them by the Presbyterian Church, through the instrumentality of the Brices, the Blairs, the Livingstones, and other ministers of that stamp, who settled in the country and became the founders of the Irish Presbyterian Church. They were aided by the influence of some of the lords of the soil, who were thoroughly good men, among whom the Hamiltons are honourably mentioned, particularly Sir James Hamilton, the ancestor of Lord DufFeriii, who had been ennobled by the title of Lord Claneboy. “ To my discerning,” says Living stone, “he was the one man who most resembled the meekness of Jesus Christ in all his carriage that ever I saw, and was
O
so far reverenced of all, even by the wicked, that he was oft troubled Avith that Scripture, ‘ Woe to you when all men speak well of you.’ “ Sir Hugh Clotworthy, ancestor of Lord Masserene, also exerted himself as a religious and social reformer, and was a man of great influence. Through their exertions, and those of eminent ministers whom they induced to settle in the country, a great and permanent improvement was effected amongst the people.
Dr. Ileid remarks that most of the northern clergymen in the Established Church were at this period Nonconformists, both in principle and in practice. They conformed just so far as would ensure their security and maintenance under the protection of the legal establishment. In some of the dioceses this was all the bishops required. When succeeding prelates became more strict in exacting uniformity, the clergy generally yielded, though with reluctance, that canonical obedience required ‘of them before their superiors ; but in the seclusion of their parishes they continued to observe the Presbyterian forms, so congenial to the habits and preju dices of their people. A more searching intolerance, however, was soon after enthroned in high places. The good Primate Usher was not disposed to molest them, but when the Lord- Deputy Wentworth arrived, a policy of persecution inspired by Laud was carried out with relentless severity. Blair,
G2 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist ministers, went to London to plead with the king for a number of his brethren \vlio had been suspended by the northern bishops, armed Avith letters from noblemen and gentlemen to their friends at Court. The Earl of Stirling, then Secretary of State, promised to forward his suit, at which the good minister was so overjoyed that he said, “I did literally exult ;md leap. But Avhcn the timorous man saw my for wardness, he, fearing Bishop Land move than God, did faint and break his promise.” Blair then put his case in the hands of Secretary Cool:, who laid his petition before the king. A gracious answer vras given, directed to Strafford. Having obtained his errand, Mr. Blair states that he gave the Secre tary’s clerks “ three jacobuses,” himself taking nothing. He hastened back to Ireland, but Went worth had not arrived. Though appointed Lord-Deputy in January, 1032, he did not enter upon his government till the July following. Blair Avaited upon him in Dublin, for the haughty Earl. told, him he had his Majesty’s mind in his own breast. He reviled the Church of Scotland, and upbraided the petitioner, bidding him come to his right wits, and then he should be regarded. With this intelligence, he says, “ I Avent to Archbishop Usher, Avhich was so disagreeable to him that it drew tears from his eyes ; but he could not help us.” All hopes of relief Avcre thus blasted, and in the tone and manner of the Deputy they discerned the storm that was gathering round the rest of their brethren throughout the kingdom.
By the “ graces “ of Charles I. it was stipulated that all “ Scottish men,” undertakers in Ulster and other places, should be made free citizens of Ireland, and that no advan tage for want of denisation should be taken against the heirs or assigns of those that be dead. The king consented to the calling of a Parliament to give the sanction of Law to those graces, but he did not keep his word. When the Parliament assembled in July, l(j:U<, and had voted an extraordinary supply, the Commons presented a remonstrance to the king, urging the ratification of the graces. Wentworth refused to transmit their request to his master, for which
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service Charles was peculiarly grateful. Writing in October following, lie said, “ Your last public despatch has given me a great deal of contentment, and especially for keeping off the envy of a necessary negative from me of those unreason able graces that that people expected from me.” Subsequently, however, the Irish Parliament passed an Act “ for tho natu ralization of all the Scottish nation which were born before his late Majesty King James’s accession to the throne of England and Ireland,” these persons having been previously regarded by the common law as foreigners, and therefore incapable of legally acquiring or possessing property within the realm of Ireland. The king was assured in the preamble to the Act that the grievance about to be removed was a sad discouragement and disheartening unto many of his subjects of Scotland that would otherwise have planted themselves here for the further civilizing, strengthening, ar.d securing this realm against rebels at home and all foreign invasion.”
O O
Archbishop Laud directed his special attention to the state of the Irish Establishment, which, it must be confessed, Avas by no means satisfactory. Throughout the greater part of the country, owing to the neglect of the bishops, the parish churches, and even the cathedrals, were in a wretched state of dilapidation, a great part of the Church revenues having been alienated from their successors, and appropriated to the aggrandisement of their families. The ecclesiastical courts were mere engines of oppression and extortion. Bishop Burnet, in his Life of Bedell, says, “Bribes went about almost barefaced, and the exchange they made of penance for money was the worst sort of simony, being in effect the very same abuse that gave the world such scandal when it was so indecently practised in the Church of Home, and so opened the way to the Reformation.” Bishop Bedell him self sent to Laud in 1030 a sketch of the religious condition of the kingdom. His own cathedral of Ardagh, together with the bishop’s house there, were “down to the ground.” The parish churches were “all in a manner ruined and un roofed and unrepaired/’ The clergy, being English, had not the tongue of the people, and could not converse with them
fij, IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
or perform for them any divine oiiices. Many of them held two, three, four, or more vicarages apiece. In the meantime every parish had its priest, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy exercised full jurisdiction. “ His Majesty,” says Bedell, “is now with the greater part of this country, as to their hearts and consciences, king but at the Pope’s discretion.” This account was corroborated by Brauihall,, whom Cromwell called “the Canterbury of Ireland” from his resemblance to Land. In a letter to that prelate, with respect to the fabrics, he wrote, “It is hard to say whether the churches be more ruinous and sordid or the people irreverent.” In Dublin he found one parochial church “converted to the Lord Deputy’s stable;” a second to a nobleman’s dwelling-house; the choir of a third to a tennis-court, “and the vicar acts the keeper.”1 “In Christ’s Church, the principal church in Ireland, whither the Lord Deputy and Council repair every Sunday, the vaults from one end of the minster to the other are made into tippling-rooms for beer, wine, and tobacco, demised all to Popish recusants, and by them to others, much frequented in time of divine service.” The inferior sort of ministers he described as “below all degrees of contempt in respect of their poverty and ignorance,” and proceeds, “the boundless heaping together of benefices by commendams and dispen sations in the superiors is but too apparent; yea, even often by plain usurpations and indirect compositions made between the patrons, as well ecclesiastical as lay, and the incumbents; by which the least part, many times not above forty shillings, rarely ten pounds in the year, is reserved for him chat should serve at the altar; in so much that it is affirmed, that by all or some of these means one bishop in the remoter parts of the kingdom doth hold three-and-twenty benefices with cure. Generally their residences are as little as their livings. Seldom any suitor petitions for less than three vicarages at a time.”
Bramhall was made Bishop of Deny, and henceforth all the sees as they became vacant were filled by High Church men of the Laud stamp, in whose eyes there was nothing in human depravity so abominable as the sin of schism. Went-
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worth required the aid of such men to carry out his schemes of absolutism, and it must be admitted that he found ready instruments in most of the prelates. He had ordered a convocation of the clergy to meet simultaneously with the Parliament for the purpose of adopting the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, so that the Irish Articles might become a dead letter. The convocation went to work conscientiously, digesting the canons, &c., to the best of their judgment; but Wentworth found that they were not doing what he wanted, and resolved to bring them to their senses. In a letter to Laud he chuckled over his victory, apparently quite unconscious that he had been playing the tyrant, circa sacra, in a style worthy of Henry VIII. Having learned what the committee of convocation had done, he instantly sent for Dean Andrews, its chairman, requiring him to bring the Book of Canons noted in the margin, together with the draught he was to present that afternoon to the House. This order he obeyed; “but,” says the Lord Deputy, “when I came to open the book, and run over the deli her and urns in the margin, I confess I was not so much moved since I came into Ireland. I told him, certainly not a Dean of Limerick, but an Ananias, had sat in the chair of that committee; however, sure I was an Ananias had been there in spirit, if not in body, with all the fraternities and conventicles of Amsterdam, that I was ashamed and scandalised with it above measure,” He gave the Dean imperative orders not to report anything till he heard from him again. He also issued orders to the Primate, the Bishops of Meath, Kilmore, Kaphoe, and Deny, together with Dean Leslie, the prolocutor, and the whole committee, to wait upon him next morning. He then publicly rebuked them for acting so unlike Churchmen ; told them that a few petty clerks had presumed to make articles of faith, without the privity or consent of State or bishop, as if they purposed at once “to take away all government and order forth of the Church. But those heady and arrogant courses he would not endure, nor would he suffer them either to be mad in the convocation nor in their pulpits.” He next gave
6(3 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
them strict injunctions as to what the convocation should do. They were to say content, or not content, to the Articles of England, for he would not endure that they should be disputed. He ordered the Primate to frame a canon on the subject; but it did not meet his approval, and so the Lord Deputy framed one himself, whereupon his Grace came to him instantly and said he feared the canon would never pass in such a form as his lordship had made, but he was hopeful it might pass as he had drawn it himself. He therefore besought the Lord Deputy to think a little better of it. The sequel is best told in Stratford’s own vigorous language: — “ But I confess, having taken a little jealousy that his pro- cedings were not open and free to those ends I had my eye upon, it was too late now either to persuade or to affright me. I told his lordship I was resolved to put it to them in those very words, and was most confident there were not six in the House that would refuse them, telling him, by the sequel, we should see whether his lordship or myself better understood their minds in that point, and by that I would be content to be judged, only for order’s sake I desired his lordship would vote this canon first in the LTpper House of Convocation, and so voted, then to pass the question beneath also.” He adds that he enclosed the canon’’4 to Dean Leslie, “which, accordingly, that afternoon was unanimously voted, first with the bishops, and then by the rest of the clergy, excepting one man, who simply did deliberate upon the receiving of the Articles of England.”
We have heard much of late of the sacred and indissoluble union of the English and Irish Churches. The letters of Strafford show by what means that union was effected, and the constitution of the Irish Establishment as it now stands, in doctrine and in discipline, was finally settled. A more humiliating spectacle was never presented in the whole course of ecclesiastical history than by the Irish Convocation, in thus abjectly submitting to the tyrannical dictation and bullying of an unscrupulous Lord Deputy, whose object was, as he himself expressed it, to make the king as absolute in * The first Irish canon.
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Ireland “as any prince in the whole world can be.” In order more effectually to accomplish this object, he established in Dublin a “High Commission,” to support the ecclesiastical courts and officers, ato bring the people to a conformity of religion, and to raise a good revenue for the Crown.” The Court was established, and the chief use to which its formidable powers were turned was to exterminate the Presbyterians in Ulster. The new Bishop of Down, Henry Leslie, a Scotchman, was the most vigorous agent of this policy; he was unrelenting in the persecution of his country men who had been officiating in his diocese. So severe were his measures, that a number of the ministers and people prepared to emigrate to the wilds of America for the sake of enjoying liberty of conscience. But the vessel proving un- seaworthy, and being caught in a storm, they were obliged to put back, and so the scheme of colonisation was aban doned. Many of the laity took refuge in the west of Scotland, chiefly in the counties of Ayr and Wigton, where they were kindly harboured by the inhabitants, much to the annoyance of the Scottish bishops. Bramhall, Bishop of Deny, was equally active in that quarter. Wentworth extended his inquisition into the titles of the London companies, and in the year 1637, in consequence of proceedings instigated by him in the London Star Chamber, they were sentenced to pay to the Crown the enormous fine of «£70,000, their patent was revoked, their lands were seized in the name of the king, and Bishop Bramhall was appointed receiver-general of all their Irish revenues. If any one in Ireland breathed a word of objection to those arbitrary and rapacious pro ceedings, he was at once crushed through the instrumentality of the Dublin Star Chamber. Subordinate instruments, worthy of their master, tortured and plundered without mercy wherever they had an opportunity. A commission was issued by Wentworth, authorizing the Bishop of Down to arrest and imprison, during pleasure, the Nonconformists in his diocese. Numbers of Presbyterians were committed to prison, or were forced to fly to Scotland, bnt the majority, bending before the storm, yielded a reluctant conformity,
F 2
08 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
while cursing prelacy in their hearts. Bishop Leslie was by no means satisfied with the result of his operations. Accord ingly he wrote to the Lord Deputy, complaining that many whom he had brought to some measure of conformity had revolted, and when he called them to account they scorned his process, because the sheriffs would not give effect to his excommunications. To this communication Sir-afford replied, that if he gave him a list of the offenders, with their places of abode, lie would not fail speedily to send his pursuivants for them, and have them made subject to the ecclesiastical courts. This was done, and the consequence was the ruin of several of the best families in the country. This was not enough however. The next step was to impose upon the Presbyterians what was called the “Black Oath’9 which bound those that took it, not only to bear true allegiance to King Charles, but to submit in all due obedience to all his royal commands, and to renounce and abjure all covenants, oaths, and bonds whatsoever, contrary to this oath. In vain did the leading royalists of Ulster entreat that a qualifying phrase might be inserted in the oath — “just commands,” or “commands according to law.” Implicit submission to every thing the king enjoined, whether political or religious, was absolutely demanded. The Commissioners appointed to administer the Black Oath wore required to make a return of all the Scots in each parish. In presence of the military, the Presbyterian congregations were compelled to take the oath kneeling, their ministers setting the example. Women were also obliged to take it, the only class exempted being Roman Catholics. But many of the Presbyterians refused, and upon them the highest penalties short of death were unsparingly inflicted, without distinction of age, rank, or sex. These atrocities were summed up in a petition, pre sented from the Irish Presbyterians to the Long Parliament by Sir John Clotworthy. The petitioners stated that their most painful, godly, and learned ministers were by the bishops and their commissaries silenced and deprived for not conforming and subscribing to an unlawful canon; that through the hotness of the persecution they were forced to
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flee the land, and their places were supplied by men unsound in doctrine, profane in life, and cruel in persecution — the bishops conferring livings upon their children and retainers, studendi yratia — four, five, six, or more benefices to each ; that the King’s officers were required to execute the bishops’ writs, apprehending honest men and women, and casting them into prison until they were forced to free themselves by a heavy composition ; that they usurped with a high hand the judicature of civil causes, imposed fines beyond all bounds, and imprisoned at their pleasure, whereby many were utterly undone ; “ that divers of the prelates did jointly frame and wickedly combine, with the Earl of Strafford, that most lawless and scandalous oath, iinpor.cd upon the Scottish- British among us, who were Protestants, for receiving all commands indefinitely ; that very many, as if they had been traitors in the highest degree, were searched for, apprehended, examined, reviled, threatened, imprisoned, fettered by threes and fours in iron yoaks ; some carried up to Dublin in chains, and fined in the Star Chamber, in thousands beyond ability, arid condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Divers, before delivering of children, were apprehended, threatened, and terrified. Others of them two or three days after childbirth so narrowly searched for, that they were fain to fly out of all harbour into woods, mountains, caves, and cornfields, and many days and nights together absent themselves, to the impairing the health of very many, and to the death of divers, and loss of their goods, which the enemy at their pleasure made havoc of. These with many more, inexpres sible, have been the woeful effects of the Oath drawn up by advice of the prelates, and so unjustly pressed by the authority of the Earl of Strafford.”
The petition goes on to state that the prelates had taken possession of the best lands in every county, pretending that they were Church lands, “ so that there is scarce a gentle man of any worth whom they have not bereaved of some part of his inheritance, few daring to oppose their unjust com mands, and if they did, there is none able to maintain their just titles against their power and oppression, J3y these
70 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
ways have they ruinated anil undone many families, destroyed and cast away thousands of souls, and moreover, in their own persons, been a scandal to the Gospel, and a stumbling- block, even unto the common enemy, by their swearing, cursing, drunkenness, sabbath-breaking, &c., having such servants usually in their families as are the most profane in the kingdom, few others being countenanced by them but such ; and if any seem to be of an holy life, he is scorned and persecuted by them/’*
Sixteen of the charges against Strafford related to his government of Ireland, and among the.se was his issuing of the warrant to Bishop Leslie, and his empowering him to imprison at pleasure the Nonconformists of his diocese, and imposing the Black Oath without authority of Parlia ment. The case of Henry Stewart and his family produced a strong impression on the House. For refusing to take the oath he was fined in the sum of £o, 000, his wife in a similar sum, his two daughters oC^OOO each, and his servant «£J2,000 — a sum of ^ 16.000 off one family, all being imprisoned in Dublin at their own charges till the fine should be paid. Sir John Clotworthy and Sir James Montgomery appeared as witnesses 011 several of the articles, the most important of which were fully proved. The evil work of the Star Chamber was, as far as possible, undone by the English Parliament. The London corporation received back its estates in Deny and Coleraine. The sentences of the Iri&h Commission Court were reversed, and peace was restored. During all the time of the persecution of Protestants in the north, the Roman Catholics were unmolested. Their bishops, priests, fraternities, schools, arid colleges all flourished until they were betrayed into the rebellion of 1641, for which they afterwards so severely suffered. At first the Presby terians were spared by the rebels ; but as the insurrection proceeded they were involved in the general proscription, which doomed all Protestants to extirpation. Fortunately they were not taken by surprise like the Episcopalians, and they had time to concert measures for self-defence. The * Reid, vol. i., p. 275.
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havoc produced by this outbreak of fanaticism was fearful. The Established Church was now overthrown and desolate. Few of her clergy, and not one of her prelates, remained in Ulster. The Presbyterians returned from Scotland in large numbers, followed by many new settlers from that country. Now much favoured by the gentry and authorities, they set about laying the foundations of the Presbyterian Church in Ulster, in exact accordance with the Scottish model, “ and from this period,” Dr. Reid states, “the history of her ministry, her congregations, and her ecclesiastical courts, as they now exist, can be traced in uninterrupted succession. The Church in Ulster rapidly revived, and broke forth on the right hand and 011 the left. The seed sown prior to the rebellion, though long checked in its growth by the chilling severities of the prelates, now began to spring up with reno vated vigour, and to gladden the wilderness with its verdure and fertility.”
In 1644 Commissioners were sent to Ulster to administer the Solemn League and Covenant. They reached Carrick- fergus in the end of March, and immediately commenced the work entrusted to them, having attended a meeting of the presbytery, where they produced their commission and a letter from the Scottish General Assembly. The oath was first administered to the regiments of the Scotch army, and it is stated that “ the whole country about came and wil lingly joined themselves in the Covenant, a very fewexcepted, who were either some old conformist ministers, or known profane ungodly persons.” Hundreds came forward at the same time, and publicly renounced the Black Oath. At Belfast, however, there was no liberty granted to offer the Covenant, and it was with difficulty the Commissioners got leave to preach there. Proceeding through the province, they explained the Covenant and administered the oath to large numbers ; but in some places, and especially in Deny, there was great opposition. The mayor sent them a message prohibiting their coming at their peril ; but Sir Frederick Hamilton, a bold man, and very influential, came to the wall, sent for them, and brought them through the gates to
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his own house, much encouraging them, and commending their resolution in coming forward, notwithstanding the threatening they had received. “ As they went towards his lodging through the streets,” says a contemporary record, “ there seemed to be a commotion among the people, some by their countenance and carriage declaring their indigna tion, some their “affection.” Both the mayor, Thornton, and the governor, Mervyn, were warm partisans of prelacy ; but as the inhabitants were mostly Presbyterian, there was a strong reaction in favour of the Covenant, “ which many embraced with much signs of affection.” Thence the Com missioners proceeded to Raphoe, Letterkemiy, and Ennis- killen, where they were kindly received by Sir AYilliam Cole, whose family took the Covenant. ‘‘ From this period,” says Dr. Reid, “ may be dated the commencement of the second reformation with which this province has been favoured — a- reformation observable not only in the rapid increase of churches and of faithful and zealous ministers, but still more unequivocally manifested in the improving manners and habits of society, and in the growing attention of the people to religious duties and ordinances.”
It was reported to the Scottish Assembly that in the two counties of Down and Antrim above sixteen thousand per sons of age and understanding had embraced the Covenant, besides the Scottish forces ; yet there were only two actual ministers in all those bounds who adhered to the Presbyterian discipline in all things. The former ministers were dis trusted for their conformity, and because they had taken the Black Oath. Hence the presbytery of Bangor applied for Scottish ministers, stating that unless the reverend brethren from Scotland whom the last General Assembly had sent over “ had taken much pains here, both the army and the inhabitants had removed themselves thence, and left the land for a free habitation to the bloody and barbarous idolaters.” Supplies of ministers soon reached Ulster, and the Presby terian historian relates that “ no sooner had prelacy been deprived of the warlike support of the State in consequence gf the civil wars, than the people, left to their own unre-
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stricted choice, declared their preference of the Presbyterian form of government. The few Episcopal ministers who had either remained in the country or returned after the first fury of the rebellion had subsided, found themselves unable, while unsupported by the strong arm of the law, to re establish their worship or government.” Some of them therefore conformed to Presbyterian usages, in order to secure the confidence of the people. The Presbyterian ministers having the field very much to themselves, soon showed that they were not much in. advance of the age in which they lived, and that even persecution had failed to teach them the lesson of toleration. The presbytery in 1645, “finding the Papists to grow numerous in the country, and consider ing their numbers might thereafter prove dangerous to the Protestant religion, and that by the treaty between Scotland and England no toleration is to be given to Papists, and also pitying their souls in their ignorant and hardened condition, made an act that they should be dealt with by the several ministers, to convince them of their idolatry and errors, and bring them to own the truth, or otherwise to enter into process against them in order to excommunication ; and they appointed some of their number to speak to the Major- General, that he use that authority he hath for forcing them out of this -part, and wholly out of the army, if they remain obstinate. This act of the presbytery was publicly intimated in the several parish churches.”
The spirit of ascendency was now coming strongly upon the Presbyterians. They began to grow jealous of the Independents, who by means of the self-denying ordinance, and the new elections, were rapidly gaining the preponder ance both in the army and in the House of Commons. Dr. Reid so far sympathises with this jealousy, though condemn ing the intolerance of the time, that he calls the Independents a “ faction.” When General Monk was commanding the British forces in Ulster, he maintained friendly relations with the presbytery, and assisted them in carrying out their discipline. Accordingly, under his auspices they called “before them a number of ministers, whom they deposed for
74, IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
various offences, amongst which are mentioned “ intruding on a neighbouring parish, railing against the professors of godliness, and baptizing promiscuously.” In 1649 the presbytery of Belfast began to take a more comprehensive view of its duties and responsibilities, and published a mani festo called “ A necessary representation of the present evils and imminent dangers to religion, laws, and liberties, arising from the late and present practices of the sectarian party in England and their abettors.” Among the charges made against them were these: that they loved a rough garment to deceive ; that they had with a high hand despised the Covenant, calling it “ a bundle of particular arid contrary interests, and a snare to the people;” and, most heinous of all, “ they endeavoured to establish by law a universal toleration of all religions, which would embrace even pagan ism arid Judaism in its arms.’1 Having reviewed the conduct of this party, the presbytery proceeded to express its horror at the execution of the king in the following terms: — “ Neither hath their fury stopt here, but without rule or example, being but private men, they have proceeded to the trial of the king, against both the interests and protestations of the Kingdom of Scotland, and the former public decla rations of both kingdoms (and besides their violent haste, rejecting any defences) ; with cruel hands they put him to death, an act so horrible as no history, divine or human, ever had a precedent of the like.”
For this intermeddling with State affairs the Belfast presbytery was sharply rebuked by Milton, as secretary to the Protector. “ What mean these men ?” he asks. “ Is the presbytery of Belfast, a small town in Ulster, of so large extent, that their voices cannot serve to teach duties in the congregations which they oversee, without spreading and divulging to all parts, far beyond the diocese of Patrick or Columba, their written representation, under the subtle pretence of feeding their own flock ? Or do they think to oversee or undertake to give account of all to whom they send greeting ? And surely in vain were bishops, for these and other causes, forbid to sit and vote in the House, if these
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men out of the House and without vote shall claim and be permitted more licence on their presbyterial stools to breed continual disturbance by interposing in the commonwealth. Of this representation, therefore, we can esteem and judge no other than of a slanderous and seditious libel, sent abroad by a sort of incendiaries to delude, and make better way under the cunning and plausible name of a presbytery.” Milton proceeds with running “observations” on the decla ration, in which he speaks of its “notorious falsities, its shameless hypocrisy,” charging its authors, “unhallowed priestlings,” with designing rebellion against the govern ment, which followed immediately after, when the Scottish inhabitants, he said, had joined Ormonde and the Irish rebels in an open war against the Parliament. He speaks of the rancour that leavened them, as having ‘‘somewhat quickened the common drawling of their pulpit elocution.” In answer to the charge that the Government had not endeavoured to extirpate Popery and Prelacy according to the Covenant, he said, “ No man well in his wits, endeavouring to root up weeds out of his ground, instead of using the spade will take up a mallet or a beetle; nor doth the Covenant any way engage us to extirpate or to prosecute the men, but the heresies and errors in them, which we tell these divines, and the rest that understand not, belongs chiefly to their own functions in the diligent preaching and insisting upon sound doctrine, in the confuting, not the railing down, encountering errors, both in public and private conference, and by the power of truth — not of persecution — subduing those authors of heretical opinions, and lastly, in the spiritual execution of church discipline within their own congregations.”*
In reference to this document, Dr. Reid remarks that it is “a fair sample of the scurrility and overbearing violence and contempt of the ministerial office by which the usurp ing faction and their abettors were characterised. “t But the Presbyterians soon found the difference between the
* “ Observations upon the Articles of Peace with Irish Eebels, on the Letter of Ormonde to Colonel Jones, and the Representation of the Presbytery of Belfast.”
f History, vol. ii., p. 178.
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government of the “ usurping faction “ and the “ constitu tional government under Charles II.,” for the restoration of which “they innocently prayed. They had now learned to class all their fellow-Protestants under two names. The Episcopalians were “Malignants,” and the Independents and Baptists were “Sectaries,” while the Presbyterians were entirely and exclusively the people of God without any manner of doubt. Dr. Reid says that during the vicissitudes of the civil war the presbytery persevered in testifying against the power of the usurpers and in favour of a limited monarchy. Commissioners were sent over from Scotland in 1G50 to encourage the presbytery in their opposition to the government, and in their adherence to the king, now solemly pledged to support the Covenant. Providence, as if in anger, at length granted their prayer ; but before that con summation which they so devoutly wished, and had reason afterwards to deplore, they had an opportunity of enjoying the blessings of civil government conducted on the prin ciples of Christian equity and religious freedom.
When Henry Cromwell first came to Dublin, in March, 1654, he found the government in a very unsatisfactory state, the Council doing very little except making orders to give away the public lands, the larger proportions being given to each of themselves. Of course the country was discontented under such a -re’;] hue, but Henry Cromwell testified that the utmost it desired was “that all might be upon an equal account as to encouragement and coun tenance.” A year later he was sent over again as “Major- General of the army in Ireland,’’ and he was soon after invested with the government of the country. His policy had a marvellous effect in tranquillizing the minds of all parties, and softening sectarian animosities. The various denominations rivalled one another in the warmth of their testimony to the excellence of his government — “ his equal justice to all, and mercy to the poor/’ Notwithstanding the seditous proceedings of the Presbyterians, they were protected by him in the exercise of their discipline and the observance of public worship, and they were even allowed
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to enjoy the State endownments “ without any ensnaring engagement,” though they refused to keep the days of public fasting and thanksgiving ordered by the government. In 1658 he invited a number of the more eminent Presbyterian and Independent ministers to meet him in Dublin in order to treat about “ the regulation and improvement of their maintenance, which had hitherto been carried on in a mongrel way between salary and tithes.” The result was that he adopted a plan by which each minister should have a salary of £100 a year — a very liberal stipend, considering the value of money in those times. The Independents were the ablest and most devoted champions of the Common wealth, and they were naturally favourites with the Protec tor. Steele, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, was the head of that party in Dublin, and he was not satisfied because it was not in the ascendant. But Henry Cromwell was determined to maintain the principle of religious equality. “ I wish,” he wrote, “ I could truly say that the Independents [ire not dissatisfied. It may be some of them thought they should ride when they had thrown the Anabaptists out of the sad dle. But I must neither respect persons, nor parties, nor rumours, so as to be thereby diverted from an equal distri bution of respect and justice to all; though I hope I shall always take a good care of all (under what form soever) in whom I see the least appearance of godliness.”*
I am not surprised to read that under this system of government, though branded as usurpation, “ the kingdom continued to enjoy unusual tranquillity, and in no part of the empire did there exist a more cordial or general sub mission to the new Protector.” The Presbyterians improved the opportunity to the uttermost in extending and strength ening their Church in Ulster ; but at the same time they exerted themselves by every means in their power to bring about the Restoration. Had not Charles solemnly sworn to maintain the League and Covenant? and would he not therefore favour the Presbyterians and establish their Church in Ireland to the exclusion of the Malignants and * Reid, vol. ii., p. 317.
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the Sectaries ? In 1060 & synod was held at Ballymena, when all the brethren in the north were present. Mr. Adare brought every one of them a warrant for the tithes of their respective parishes, so far as was in the power of the commissioners in Dublin. Two ministers were deputed to present an address of congratulation to the king in London ; but they were disheartened as they approached the metropolis by ominous rumours of a change in the royal mind. One powerful friend after another declined to intro duce them to the Court. Monk, their former patron, now Duke of Albemarle, “ disgusted their address, and would not concern himself in it as it was drawn up.” It contained a denunciation of Prelacy, and laudation of the Covenant. Sorely against their conscience they were obliged to expunge those words. The King condescended to hear the address as then framed. “ But he looked with an awful majestical countenance on them •” no doubt meaning to assume the most sublime expression of Divine right. He gave them good words, and bid them not fear.
Under the government which they had laboured to over throw, their ministers had increased from half-a-dozen to seventy, regularly and permanently settled, and having under their charge nearly eighty parishes or congregations, with a population of not far from 100,000. But the flocks were soon scattered, and the shepherds compelled to fly. The bishops were immediately restored to their sees. Bramhall and Leslie, their old enemies, came back to their posts, having a long account to settle with those who had been ruling in their places, and denouncing them as Malignants. Three of the Leslies now wore mitres : — John in Raphoe, Robert in Dromore, and Henry in Down and Connor. The latter was removed to Meath, and was succeeded by the celebrated Jeremy Taylor, who, forgetting his Liberty of Prophesy in cj, dealt with the Presbyterians as they had dealt with the Catholics. Presbytery was now repudiated scornfully by the nobility and gentry who had zealously patronised it a little while ago— the Broghills, the Cootes, the Blaneys, the Cauldfields, the Coles, the Rawdons, the
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Trevors, the Hills, and many others. Four of the ministers were sent on a deputation to Dublin, where they were, as they reported, “ but unkindly entertained by the Council, divers bishops being then privy councillors, besides other unfriends.” They were reviled and mocked by the Episcopal party in Dublin. Jeremy Taylor summoned the ministers of his dioceses to appear in his presence at Lisburn, and placed before them a cruel dilemma. “ He said he perceived they were in a hard taking ; for if they did conform contraiy to their conscience they would be but knaves, and if not, they could not be endured contrary to law ; lie wished them therefore deponere conscientiam erroneam.” Accordingly in one day the bishop declared thirty-six of their churches vacant. The ministers were silenced, and thrust out of their charges, in some cases with violence. Altogether sixty-one Presbyterian ministers, nearly the whole number then in Ulster, were evicted by the northern prelates, and deprived of their benefices. The penalties of recusancy were in many districts inflicted by an intolerant magistracy, with unwonted severity, on both ministers and people ; for two or three years their condition was deplorable, and again the ministers began to think of emigrating to America, “ because of persecutions and general poverty abounding in those parts, and on account of their straits, and little or no access to their ministry.”*
During the brief reign of James II. the Catholics had their turn, and every office under the government was emptied to make way for them. But Derry was defended gloriously against his army ; the Prince of Orange, of im mortal memory, established the principle of toleration, so far as Protestants were concerned, and the Presbyterians reaped for a season the advantages of the change. They were the first in the kingdom to hail the arrival of William in England, and to wish success to his “ glorious under taking to deliver these nations from Popery and slavery.” They heartily joined the Episcopalians in fighting for civil and religious liberty ; and when the king arrived in Ireland, * Reid, vol. ii., p. 425.
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lie did not forget their loyalty and devotion, though a number of the ministers had retired to Scotland. In a petition to his Majesty, in 1689, they pleaded their loyalty, and prayed tli cat all sufferings for 11011 -conformity might be for the future prevented — that his Majesty might be a nursing father to their Church — that their ministers being reduced to insup portable straits, might for their present necessary support have a proportionable share of the public charitable col lections, and a future competent maintenance. In answer to this petition, the king wrote to the Duke of Schomberg, directing that they should receive that protection and sup port that their affection to his service deserved, that they might live in tranquillity under his government. When in Ireland, he issued from Hillsborough an order addressed to Christopher Carleton, the collector of customs at Belfast, authorizing the payment of £1,200 yearly to the Presby terian clergy of Ulster. This was the origin of the grant called Regium Donum, or royal bounty, which has been augmented from time to time, having, instead of a local charge, become a parliamentary grant, which now amounts to £40,609 per annum.
There was much to be done after the Revolution to restore religion in Ulster. Jeremy Taylor was dead, and his suc cessor in Down and Connor resided at Hammersmith, and had not been within his charge for twenty years. The clergy took all sorts of liberties in his absence, and ecclesi astical scandals were rife, not only in that diocese, but throughout the province. The habit of the Irish to run down one another was then, as now, a national character istic ; for Archbishop Tillotson once observed, that “ if he should hearken to what the Irish clergy said of one another, there was not a man of the whole country that ought to be preferred.” William protected the Irish Presbyterians while he lived, but after his death their troubles were renewed, and much of their subsequent history consists in the records of their grievances. The bishops were opposed to their legal toleration, and waged a war of polemics against them. They were so powerless in the Irish Parliament that they were
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not able to carry a single point, and for a long time they were obliged to petition humbly for “ legal liberty.” The validity of their marriages was questioned, and they were harassed by proceedings on that score. In 1704 was passed the Sacramental Test, by which the Presbyterians and other Dissenters were turned out of all public places of trust and emolument, and from all municipal offices. Presbyterian magistrates were deprived of their commissions, and they were thus, to a certain extent, brought under the penal code, whose ostensible object was “ to prevent the further growth of Popery.” The prelates would not even allow them to educate their own children, and in 1705 they induced the House of Commons to pass this resolution : — “ That the erecting and continuing any seminary for the instruction and education of youth in principles contrary to the Estab lished Church and Government tends to create arid perpetuate misunderstandings among Protestants.” The Commons went further, and resolved that any preaching or teaching in separate congregations “ tends to defeat the succession of the Crown in the Protestant line, and to encourage and advance the interests of the pretended Prince of Wales.” The English Schism Bill was extended to Ireland, and the tyranny of the Tory party, now everywhere in the ascendant, was becoming intolerable ; but it was at length happily checked by the death of Queen Anne. “ The accession of George I.,” says Dr. Reid, “ immediately arrested the High Church faction in their furious career, and from this date the Irish Presbyterians began to breathe more freely, and to obtain relief from some, but not all of their more serious grievances.” The Irish Parliament then assembled bien nially, and at every session bills of indemnity were passed, to relieve Protestant Dissenters from the penalties which they had incurred by serving the king in the militia and otherwise. Various attempts were made to pass an Act of Toleration, but they were all defeated by the High Church party, and at last the Presbyterians lost heart, so that from 1733 many years passed away before they again made any vigorous exertions for the removal of their political griev-
G
82 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
ances. In the meantime, the monopoly of State power on one side, and political degradation on the other, produced the usual effect of general demoralization. Towards the close of the last century the condition of Presbyterian ism had sunk so low that persons were with difficulty found to occupy the pulpits, as the pastoral office presented the pro spect of a life of perpetual poverty. “ New light theology” began to disturb the peace of the Church, under the names of Arianisin, Socinianism, and Unitariamsm, which ultimately produced permanent secessions. Agrarian combinations and lawless factions also sprang up. The writings of Tom Paine were extensively circulated, and republican principles were imported largely from France and America. The volunteer movement, however, filled the minds of the people with noble aspirations. And on the memorable 1 5th of February, 1782, in the church at Dungaimon, “ the Presbyterians of the north boldly asserted the independence of the Irish Legislature, and proclaimed their joy at the relaxation of the penal laws affecting their Roman Catholic fellow subjects. This demonstration added immensely to the public excitement. The Dungannon resolutions were at once adopted with enthusiasm by the volunteers all over the country.”* In April of that year the Duke of Portland wrote to the English Home Secretary, “If you delay or refuse to be liberal, Government cannot exist here in its present form; and the sooner you recall your Lord Lieutenant, and renounce all claim to this country, the better.” The volun teers were followed by the United Irishmen and the Rebel lion of 1798. Many Presbyterians of mark, including some ministers, joined in the movement ; but, strange as it may appear, the majority of the leading conspirators were nominally connected with the Established Church.f
The Union was the result of this insurrection, and since •that event there has been a gradual approach towards re ligious equality. The Presbyterian body has increased very much during the present century. In 1840 the Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod were united under the * Reid, vol. iii., p. 455. f Dr. Madden’s “ United Irishmen.”
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name of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. The total number of its congregations now is 547, and of ministers 590, with 38 “Licentiates.”
Great efforts have been made by the Conservative party of late years to make the Presbyterians forget their history, and the history of the Established Church as well. Some years ago the Rev. Dr. Cooke, then the ruling spirit of the Assembly, and a man of great political influence, proclaimed a marriage between the Anglican and the Presbyterian Churches . The figure was unhappy, as the parties proposed to be united are “ sisters.” It was otherwise inapplicable, because in an ecclesiastical sense there can be no union between the two bodies. Dr. Cooke himself would not be permitted to preach in the meanest parish church, nor could he enjoy a living in the Establishment, without submitting to be re-ordained. Presbyterian ministers are still regarded by the Church clergy as schismatical, and are now perhaps more than ever, since the times of active persecution, carefully shunned. Very seldom indeed are any of them seen with their Episcopal brethren on the same religious platform ; and when Irish Church advocates refer to the spiritual wants of the popula tion of Ulster, the very existence of the 590 orthodox Presbyterian ministers is ignored, although it is unques tionable that the superior social condition of that province is due in a great measure to Presbyterianism.
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES,
CHAPTER IV.
AFTER a vacancy of almost seventy years, during which, writes Dr. Moran, “ the see of Dublin groaned under the usurped authority of the three first Protestant bishops, who without any spiritual jurisdiction and as mere Government agents enjoyed its temporalities, Catholic prelates were again, through the paternal providence of the Roman Pontiff, ap pointed to govern the diocese ; but such was the violence of persecution, that for more than a century after the death of Elizabeth, the canonically appointed archbishops died either in prison or in exile.” In the year 1536, the first grant of religious houses was made to the King by the authority of the Irish Parliament. This grant comprised 370 monas teries, whose yearly value amounted to £32,000, while their moveables were rated at £100,000. In the following year eight abbeys were suppressed ; and in 1538, a further order was issued for the suppression of all the monasteries and abbeys. Soon after, in Dublin and the neighbouring counties, the words of Marsham, a Protestant writer, would have been applicable: nothing remained in the monasteries “besides battered walls and deplorable ruins. The most august churches and stupendous monuments, under the specious pretence of superstition, are most filthily defiled, and ex pecting utter destruction. Horses are stabled at the altar of Christ, and the relics of martyrs are dug up.” The Lord Deputy and the Council pleaded with the English Govern ment that at least six houses might be permitted to stand ; because, there being no inns in the country, they served the purposes of hotels, entertaining the king’s deputy, his council, officers, and attendants, gratuitously, whenever they went that way. “ Also in them young men and children, both gentlemen’s children and others, both of mankind and womankind, be brought up in virtue, learning, and in the
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English tongue and behaviour, to the great charge of the said houses ; that is to say, the womankind of the whole Englishery of this land for the most part in the said nun nery, and the mankind in the other said houses. And in the said house of St. Mary’s Abbey hath been the common resort of all such of reputation as hath repaired thither out of England. Also at every hosting, road, and journey, the said houses, at their proper costs, findeth as many men of war as they are appointed by the king’s deputy.” So wrote, on the 21st of May, 1539, the Lord Deputy Gray, and the three justices, Aylmer, Luttrell, and Howth ; but the archbishop, the chancellor, and Brabazon, under-treasurer, although they agreed in opinion with the other members of the council, refused to sign the memorial, because they were named commissioners for the suppression. It appears from these documents that those religious houses, whatever might have been their abuses, were in many respects useful institutions, well suited to the times. When they were de stroyed, no other institutions to meet the wants of the country were established in their stead, and the men who were most active in the work of demolition obtained the confiscated estates as their own private property.
Such proceedings were not likely to help the reformers in converting the natives ; on the contrary, they caused them to appear in the light of great criminals, who had not only violated natural justice, but added sacrilege to plunder. Accordingly, Archbishop Brown complained, in his letters to Lord Cromwell, that the Irish were more zealous in their blindness than the saints and martyrs of the primitive Church, and that Rome had great favour for this nation “ purposely to oppose his Highness the King.” Therefore he said his hope was lost. Even the prebendaries of St. Patrick’s “ thought scorn to read” the new prayers ; and though there were twenty-eight of them all having country parishes, there was scarcely one of them that favoured God’s work. Instead of winning the natives over to England by means of religion, the Government policy actually united the two races against
86 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
England. “ It is observed,” wrote Archbishop Brown to Lord Cromwell, “ that ever since his Highness’s ancestors had this nation in possession, the old natives have been craving foreign powers to assist and rule them, and both English race and Irish began to oppose your Lordship’s orders, and to lay aside their national old quarrels, which I fear will, if anything will, cause a foreigner to invade this nation.” Then as to the social effect of the changes, he said in a subsequent letter, “ Since ever I heard the name of Ireland first, the country was never farther out of order.” Another member of the Government wrote to Cromwell, “ Here as yet the blood of Christ is clean blotted out of all men’s hearts, except the Archbishop,” &c. None, from the highest to the lowest, spiritual or temporal, “ would abide the hearing of God’s Word.” Again Robert Cowley, in the same year, wrote, expressing his sorrow to hear how “the Papistical sect springs up and spreads abroad, infecting the land pestiferously.” Many testimonies to the same effect may be found in the State papers, and in Shirley’s “Collection of Original Letters.”* In 1564 Archbishop Curwin gives a curious reason against converting St. Patrick’s Cathedral into a university : —
“A university here will be unprofitable, for the Irish enemy, under colour of study, would send their friends hither, who would learn the secrets of the country and advertise them thereof, so that the Irish rebels should by them know the secrets of the English Pale.”
Even when forced under penalties to attend the parish churches, the natives used their own religious symbols, the crucifix, the beads, the Litanies, and pictures of the Saints, Notwithstanding the proscription of the Irish language, it irresistibly encroached on the English quarters, so that in 1575 Stanihurst wrote that it was “ free denizened in the English Pale, and took such deep root that the body which was before
* Original Letters and Papers in Illustration of the History of the lurch in Ireland during the Reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, jdited, with Notes from Autographs in the State Paper Office. By Evelyn Philip Shirley, esq., M.A.
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whole and sound, became by little and little in a manner wholly putrified.”
Nearly a century after this, the author of “ Cambrensis E versus” said : — “ The Irish language is that which all of us to this day drink in on our mothers’ breasts. Except the inhabitants of Dublin, Drogheda, and Wexford, and their immediate vicinities, the only knowledge we have of English is what we learn in schools.” The Lord Deputy Sussex complained, in 1562, that the State Church was abused by the Papists, and that the people, utterly devoid of religion, came to divine service as to a May game, sometimes spilling the wine from the communion-cup, and flinging the sacra mental bread at one another. Captain Lee wrote to Elizabeth, in 1594, that even the “ Palesmen,” who were servants of the Court, as soon as they had brought the Lord Deputy to the church door, departed “ as if they were wild cats.” The conforming clergy were spoken of as “ old bottles,” which could not hold the new wine of Protestantism, as “ dumb dogs, disguised dissemblers, and lurking Papists.” Arch bishop Loftus petitioned to be relieved from the intolerable burden of Armagh, as it was neither worth anything to him, nor was he able to do any good in it, as it lay altogether among the Irish. “Oh, what a sea of troubles I have entered into !” exclaimed the Bishop of Meath, “ storms arising on every side ; the ungodly lawyers are not only sworn enemies to the truth, but also for lack of due execution of law the overthrowers of the country. The ragged clergy are stubborn and ignorantly blind, so there is left little hope of their amend ment. The simple multitude is, through continual ignorance, hardly to be won, so that I find angustice undique” This was Dr. Brady, who subsequently complained that he had no alternative but unbounded hospitality, or else “ infamy and discredit, for these people will have the one or the other. I mean, they will either eat my meat and drink, or else myself.* Archbishop Loftus strongly advised coercion to bring the people to church. They were poor, and dreaded fines, and the most obstinate might be sent over to England. * Shirley, pp. 187-191.
88 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
“ If it be objected,” he said, “ that this severe course may perhaps breed some stirs, I assure your lordship there is no dread of any such matter, for they are but beggars, and if once they perceive a thorough resolution to deal roundly with them, they will both yield and conform themselves ; and this course of reformation the sooner it is begun the better it will prosper, and the longer it is deferred the more dangerous it will be.” Seven years later he reported that while the English army, munitions, and treasures were failing, the rebels were increased and grown insolent ; and he added, “ I see no other course for this cursed country but pacification, until hereafter, when the fury is passed, her Majesty may, with more convenience, correct the heads of these traitors.” After this came civil war and the awful desolation of the country by famine and pestilence, which has been described by the poet Spenser in his “ State of Ireland.” When the English soldiers entered “the enemy’s country” they were surprised to find the land well manured and tilled, the fields well fenced, the roads and pathways well beaten, the towns populous, and the land well cropped. The soldiers of the invaders set about cutting down with their swords all the enemy’s corn, to the value of £1 0,000, in the one district of Leix. In Ulster the same plan was adopted to produce a famine, and during the next spring the inhabitants were effectually prevented from sowing and cultivating their lands. The ploughs, which were numerous, ceased to go, the cattle disappeared, the towns were burned, and the country was reduced to a desert. In Munster the same plan was so successfully adopted that the Lord Deputy could not get food for his horses till the grass had time to grow. The uniform accounts which the destroyers gave of the prosperous state of the country beyond the Pale are very remarkable. Let one or two suffice. One of the agents in this work wrote:— “ On entering O’Kane’s country we found it large and full of houses and corn ; we divided ourselves, and set a compass about, so as at night we met together, and encamped in the midst of the country, each troop having fired the houses and com they met withal, which I never saw in
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more abundance.” Sir Arthur Chichester relates, that when he landed in Ulster, in May, 1600, “ the country abounded with houses, corn, cattle, and a people who had been bred up in arms, and flushed with former victories; but he left the country desolate and waste, and the people upon it en joying nothing but as fugitives, and what they obtained by stealth.” Lord Mountjoy did the same thing in his part of the country, and wrote that he had succeeded, “by the grace of God, as near as he could, in utterly wasting the country of Tyrone.” Pestilence and famine did the rest, and the end was that both the spoiler and the spoiled were involved in like calamity. The famine was so dreadful that children were found feeding on the bodies of their dead mothers ; but there was no longer any lack of food for the Lord Deputy’s horses, for the grass grew luxuriantly in the de serted streets and squares of the ruined towns, and there were no cattle left to feed upon the meadows.
I say nothing of the massacres perpetrated by the English soldiers or the outrages inflicted upon the monks and nuns. But why do I allude at all to these barbarous atrocities ? Because they resulted from the insane attempt to force the religion, language, and habits of England upon the Irish nation. This led to combinations against the English Government, with foreign intervention, and this again led to a systematic devastation which would have disgraced the worst Government in Asia or Africa. And what did the newly-established religion gain by this tre mendous infliction — this elaborate attempt to exterminate a whole people ? Nothing whatever in the way of sincere conversion, little in the way of nominal conformity, while the Protestantism was loaded with such odium that its diffusion through the country was rendered a moral impos sibility even to this day. Sir Arthur Chichester was heard repeatedly to exclaim “that he knew not how this attach ment to the Catholic faith was so deeply rooted in the hearts of the Irish, unless it were that the very soil was infected and the very air tainted with Popery; for they obstinately prefer it to all things else — to allegiance to their king, to
90 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
respect for his ministers, to the care of their own posterity, and to all their hopes and prospects.” M/Geoghegan asserts that during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Eliza beth, and James I, not sixty of the Irish embraced the Protestant religion. In Ireland, indeed, as has been well remarked by an able writer, “the Reformation would have been more truly called ‘the Confiscation.’ “ There is at this moment scarcely an Irish nobleman, inheriting an ancient property, who does not owe the bulk of it to the confiscated lands of the Church. And what was the consequence to the Establishment ? The accounts hi the extant visitation returns of the spiritual destitution of the Irish parishes, and of the miserable poverty of the Irish clergy in the two centuries which folio wed the Reformation, are truly marvellous. Churches ruined, glebe lands violently seized, the clergy without houses, their lives threatened by the landowners lest they should perchance reside although without houses, and thus recover the spoliated property or prevent further encroachments — such was the Irish Church in the time of Bramhall. And I may add, that in much later times the same body of Irish proprietors, acting together in their Dublin Parliament, exempted from tithes their own demesnes and the immense tracts which they had converted into grazing, having evicted the people. They thus threw the whole burden of the Protestant Establishment on the Roman Catholic tillers of the soil, who had to give the tenth of their produce, under the tithe proctor system, to the clergy of those very nobility and gentry who enjoyed the estates of the Church. I do not wonder, therefore, to find a candid Roman Catholic writer remarking that “no measures appear to have been left untried by the English officials to • estrange the Irish from the Reformed Church and to excite them to revolts, the forfeitures consequent on which were usually devoted to the aggrandisement of those hirelings. In the meantime the Catholic princes of Europe found it their interest to stir up dissensions among the Irish, who were led to suppose that the attempts made to wound Eng land through Ireland were the results of religious sympathy.
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The friars and priests became the trusted agents and emis saries of the Irish chiefs, to whom they were naturally endeared by a community of country, language, and religion ; a complete change also took place in the policy of the Roman Court, and, from the time when England cast off their supremacy, the Popes became the partizans of the native Irish, whom they had before treated so superciliously. All these points remain to be fully investigated and fairly brought forward by the future ecclesiastical historians.”“
The triumph of Protestantism at the revolution of 1688 sealed the fate of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and the penal code which followed deprived them of the power of making any organized resistance to the Government down to the beginning of the present century. Part of that code was directed particularly against the priesthood. It was made a felony, punishable with death, for a priest to celebrate marriage between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic ; and the law presumed and concluded that the priest so acting knew that one of the parties was a Protestant, unless he produced a certificate under the hand and seal of the Pro testant minister of the parish that the party was not a Protestant at the time of the marriage. But there was no obligation or penalty imposed upon him to give such a certificate. Priests were made liable to imprisonment for not disclosing the secrets of the confessional, if required to do so, in a court of justice. They were prevented by law from attending Catholic soldiers or sailors to administer the rites of their religion. Their obscure places of worship had no legal protection, and the priests were interdicted from receiving any endowment or permanent provision, while they were made liable to the payment of a bachelor’s tax.
It is not easy for even the most bigoted Protestant to avoid having his heart softened by the condition of the Roman Catholics in Dublin towards the close of the last century — and by the difficulties under which their devoted clergy laboured to maintain the influence of religion among their nocks. In describing that state of things I do not * The Irish quarterly Review, No. V., p. 214.
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take as my guides Roman Catholic writers whose feelings might be supposed to give a deceptive colouring to their narratives. What follows is based upon records furnished by clergymen of the Established Church. One of these refers to the existence in Dublin of Roman Catholic schools, supported by the Roman Catholics themselves, in the early part of this century, as “ a striking feature in the toleration of the present day” (A.D. 1818). He then proceeds to state that, while the penal laws were in force, the Roman Catholic clergy were obliged to ad mil lister spiritual consolation to their flocks “rather according to their temporary convenience than any systematic plan. No places of public worship were permitted, and the clergyman moved his altar, books, and everything necessary for the celebration of his religious rites from house to house, among such of his flock as were enabled in this way to support an itinerant domestic chap lain; while for the poorer part some waste house or stable in a remote or retired situation was selected, and here the service was silently and secretly performed, unobserved by the public eye. But the spirit of toleration had already gone abroad, and an incident furnished a pretext for allow ing places of public worship while yet the statutes proscribed them. The crowds of poor people who flocked to receive the consolations of their religion were too great for the crazy edifices to contain or support them, and serious accidents, attended by the loss of sundry lives, occasioned by the fall ing down of these places of resort, called for the interference of a humane Government. In the year 1745 Lord Chesterfield, then Viceroy of Ireland, permitted these congregations to assemble in more safe and public places. The old edifices, consecrated to public worship, were reopened, and new ones gradually built in the city. And a further toleration was allowed to their clergy, unmolested to distribute their flocks in such parochial districts as might be consecrated for their attendance/’*
The rev. author, who was vicar of St. Catherine’s, remarks,
City of Dublin.” By the Rev. J. Whitelaw and the Rev. R. Walsh. Vol. II., p. 806.
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that the occasion of the reopening of the chapels was “ well remembered by sundry old men in Dublin, not long since dead.” There was a minute account of this social revolution given in Latin by Dr. Burke, afterwards bishop of Ossory, in his Hibernia Dominicana. He spoke rather too freely of the penal code for the spirit of that age; arid the con sequence was that the “ titular bishops “ met at Thurles, and held a synod, very different from the “synod of Thurles” which some years ago condemned the Queen’s Colleges. A declaration was published, signed by seven prelates, censuring the principles of the book, because they said “ they weaken and subvert allegiance, raise unnecessary scruples in the minds of people, and give a handle to those who differ in religious opinions to impute maxims that we entirely reject as not founded in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.”
The new parochial districts were Airan-quay, Mary’s-lane, Liffey-street, Townsend-street, Rosemary-lane, Bridge-street, Francis-street, Meath-street, James’s-street, and Hardwick- street ; nine chapels altogether. There were besides, half a century ago, six friaries and seven nunneries, containing about 80 nuns. The number of secular or parochial clergy was 70, and of regulars belonging to the different “ friaries,” 40 ; that is, the total number of priests in Dublin half a century ago was 110. The penal acts of Queen Anne, forbidding Roman Catholics to teach school even in private houses, was repealed by 21st Geo. III., which allowed “a Popish master” to teach, if he took the oath of allegiance, and received no Protestant child into his school. Two years later such teachers were relieved from the necessity of taking out a licence. The consequence was a rapid multiplication of schools, the work of education being chiefly in the hands of monks and nuns.
A few years later — in 1821 — another Protestant clergyman, the Rev. G. N. Wright, described the state of the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin. He remarked that there were only three of the chapels deserving of notice for architecture — the Metropolitan Chapel, in Marlborough-street ; Ann- street Chapel, in lieu of Mary’s-lane; and St. Michael’s and
94 IRELAND AXD HER CHURCHES.
St. John’s, in lieu of Rosemary-lane, 011 Essex’s-quay. He also alludes to the penal laws, and says that while they lasted, even the rich who supported chaplains as part of their households, counted their beads in silence and retirement, adding that even yet the Catholics were not permitted to summon their congregations by the toll of the bell.
Mr. Wright gives a description of the Marlborough-street Metropolitan Church, a grand structure for the time, com menced in 181(3, on a plot of ground formerly occupied by the mansion of Lord Annesley, just opposite Tyrone House, the town residence of the Marquis of Waterford, now occu pied by the National Board of Education. “ The stately edifice,” he writes, “was raised by subscription solely — £20,000 has been already expended upon it, and it will pro bably cost as much more to complete it. Mr. Hugh O’Connor contributed £4,000, and Mr. Cardiff £3,000.” Magnificent as it was, however, the Catholics of that day did not presume to call it by any more pretentious name than Metropolitan “Chapel.” When they got more courage and confidence, they called it a cathedral ; but now they do not think it worthy of that name, and it is styled “the Pro-Cathedral Church.” It does duty for a cathedral provisionally, and it is probable that Cardinal Cullen has a plan in his head and funds in his hands which promise a cathedral worthy in his estimation of the metropolis of “ Catholic Ireland.” All the Roman Catholic places of worship are now “ churches,” and many of them are the finest buildings in the country, far surpassing anything of which Protestants can boast, except St. Patrick’s and St. George’s Church.
Indeed the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in this city is astonishing, and has no parallel perhaps in any country in Europe. In 1820 there were in Dublin only ten parochial chapels, most of them of an humble character and occupying obscure positions. There were at the same time seven convents or “ friaries,” as they were then called, and ten nunneries, which Mr. Wright described as “religious asylums where the females of the Roman Catholic religion find shelter when deprived of the protection of their rela-
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tives by the hand of Providence.”* Now the loveliest daughters of some of the most respectable and the best connected Roman Catholic families leave their happy homes and take the veil, sometimes bringing with them ample fortunes — devoting themselves to the work of education and the relief of the poor as “ Sisters of Mercy,” “ Sisters of Charity,” «fcc.
There are now thirty-two churches and chapels in Dublin and its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of secular clergy is 287, and of regulars 125 ; total priests, 412. The number of nuns is 1,150. Besides the Catholic University, with its ample staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges, seven superior schools for boys, fourteen su perior schools for ladies, twelve monastic primary schools, forty convent schools, and 200 lay schools, without includ ing those which are under the National Board of Education. The Christian Brothers have 7,000 pupils under their in struction, while the schools connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000. Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the State, and contains 500 or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the College of All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for the foreign mission. The Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied and numerous. There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially — the Mater Misericordise — has been not inappropriately called “ the Palace of the Sick Poor “ — numerous orphanages, several widows’ houses, and other refuges for virtuous women; ragged arid industrial schools, night asylums, penitentiaries, reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and dumb ; institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these wonderful organizations of religion and charity are supported wholly on the voluntary principle, and they have nearly all sprung into existence within half a century. The cost of all these churches, colleges, convents, and schools must be something enormous ; and it is difficult, even for those * Wright’s Dublin, p. 174.
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who most dislike the Roman Catholic religion, to differ from a writer who says, — “ It is impossible to contemplate this rapid advance in the work of charity and piety, without the conviction that this external growth of religion is but the manifestation of an improved inner life in the general mass of the population.”5
AVhen comparing what the two Churches have done in Dublin, we must bear in mind that for the Protestant Establishment there have been the attraction and patronage of the Court, the support of the heads of all the adminis trative departments, while, up to the close of the last cen tury, there was the vast prestige of the Irish Parliament, all the members of both Houses belonging to the Established Church, as well as the judges and state dignitaries. Again, the public grants of money for the Irish Church since the Union have been most profuse. Up to 1844 they were stated, from Parliamentary returns, as follows : —
For building churches, ..... £525,371
For building glebe-houses, .... 336.889
For Protestant chanty schools, . . . 1,105,588
For the Society for Discountenancing Vice, &c., 101,991
In connexion with this subject, Roman Catholic writers and orators do not fail to remark that while the Roman Catholic bishops and priests were persecuted fugitives, or doing duty by Stealth in poverty and fear, some of the prelates of the Established Church were amassing enormous fortunes, and that bishops have been founders of many of the wealthiest families among the landed gentry of Ireland. The late Mr. Grattan, on the 12th July, 1842, during a debate in the House of Commons on the Irish Church, pro duced statistics, extracted from the probates of wills in the Registry Office, Dublin, from which it appears that Arch bishop Fowler left at his death, ,£150,000; Archbishop Beresford, of Tuam, £250,000 ; Archbishop Agar, of Cashel, £400,000; Bishop Stopford, of Cork, £25,000; Bishop Percy, of Dromore, £40,000 ; Bishop Cleaver, of Ferns, £50,000 ;
* “ Irish Catholic Directory, 1866,” p. 198.
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Bishop Bernard, of Limerick, 0^60,000 ; Bishop Porter, of Clogher, ^250,000; Bishop Hawkins, of Raphoe, ^250,000; Bishop Knox, of Killaloe, .£100,000— total hoarded by the ten prelates, <£!, 575,000.
Then, the Established Church had Trinity College, with its endowment of 199,573 acres, its fees averaging ^30,000 a year, and its right of presentation to twenty-one of the best benefices in the country, most of the Fellows being clergymen, and the University being fed by a number of royal and diocesan schools, well endowed, and under the control of the Church.
Well, what has been the result of the whole system of endowment and favour on the one side, and impoverish ment and coercion on the other ? This question has been answered by a Protestant clergyman, the Very Rev. Hussey Burgh Macartney, D.D., Dean of Melbourne, in a pamphlet, called “ The Experiment of Three Hundred Years.” It was first printed in 1847. The author took for his text-book Bishop Mant’s partial “History of the Irish Church.” On his return to his native land lately, Dean Macartney published a new edition, in which he gives the result of his inquiries and reflections. He sums up his review of the past, asking, “ What inio-ht England have done for the Irish Church ?”
& O
And he answers : — “ She might have watched over not merely the stability but the efficiency of what should ever have been regarded as a missionary Church, with a zeal pro portioned to the difficulties of its position, and the intensity of its temptations. She might have sent over, not the refuse or offscouring, but the best and worthiest of her own sons, and drawn out and encouraged native merit and native exertion. She might have aided the Irish Church in every righteous effort to educate and evangelize the people, and stimulate its flagging energies. She might have demanded of the governors she sent us, that they should regard the preferments intrusted to them as a sacred charge, for which they must give strict account not only to God, but to the nation that sent them. Had she done this, Ireland would now be the grateful friend, the firm and faithful support of
H
98 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the country that had blessed her, and their natural differ ences producing only a reciprocation of blessings, the people would have raised an united front to all the enemies of their temporal welfare, or of their common faith.”
In answer to the next question — “ What has England done ?” he replies — “ Laboured for centuries to degrade the Church of Christ into a political tool. So far from the ex periment of attempting to convert or benefit Ireland through her National Church having been tried for 300 years, dis countenance, neglect, or open persecution has attended every exhibition of spirituality within her own bosom, or of missionary exertion without. Her confidence has been gained to betray, her wealth and honours used to corrupt her ; she has been feasted like Isaac to be deceived — invited like Tamar to the fraternal mansion, to be defiled, and then cast out.”
“It is an old remark,” says an Irish peer, “that one gene ration suffers for the faults of another ; and this is not less true in ecclesiastical than civil affairs. The Irish Church had at one time singular opportunities, and she singularly neglected them, as Mant’s History abundantly proves. In no part of the British Empire were the prospects of the Reformation brighter than in Ireland, but they were blighted by mismanagement, without a parallel. The fault lay pri marily with the English Government; but whether as wrong-doer or as victim, the Irish Church suffers, and cannot expect to undo the mischief of centuries by the activity of to-day.”*
* Letter on Proselytisra.
BE VIEW OF THE PAST. 99
CHAPTER V.
I HAVE noticed the marvellous progress of the principles of toleration during the last century, as illustrated in the history of the Roman Catholics of Dublin. Illustrations not less striking may be found in the history of Protestant Dissent. We could not have a better starting point for our review of this progress of religious freedom than the trial of the Rev. Thomas Emlyn for heresy and blasphemy in the Court of Queen’s Bench, on the 14th of June, 1703. Mr. Emlyn was an Englishman, born at Stamford, Lincolnshire, in 16G3. He entered the Dissenting ministry whenjust twenty years of age, and almost immediately after he came to Ire land as domestic chaplain to the Countess of Donegal, with whose family he resided for sonic time in Belfast, after which he removed to London. In 1091 he was induced, after repeated and urgent invitations, to become co-pastor of the Presbyterian congregation of Wood-street — afterwards Strand-street — in Dublin, Mr. Boy.se being the senior minister. Emlyn was a man of superior abilities, accom plished, amiable, upright, a learned divine, and an eloquent preacher. The congregation numbered a thousand people, and included some of the nobility. For ten or twelve years everything went on pleasantly with Mr. Emlyn ; but in the course of his studies he began to entertain doubts of the divinity, or rather the supreme deity of Christ. He ascribed to Him all the other attributes in common with Trinitarians, but this he regarded as incompatible with the unity of God. Though averse, as he said, “ to any mean compliances against his light in such sacred matters,” he did not think it wise to throw himself abruptly out of a station of usefulness by an open avowal of his sentiments ; and so he rather evaded the doctrines on which his mind was changed in the course of his preaching — dealing mostly with practical
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100 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
subjects. The congregation, did not perceive this, and his preaching was as popular and apparently as useful as ever. But there was one member, Dr. dimming, an elder of the congregation, who had been a divinity student, and he de tected the latent heresy in the preaching of the junior pastor. He revealed his suspicions to Mr. Boyse ; they both waited on Emlyn, and questioned him on the subject. He then confessed frankly the change in his opinions, and offered to resign at once. To this they objected, and suo-o’ested a conference of the dissenting ministers of the city — Messrs. Weld, Travers, Sinclaire, Tredell, and Tate. “ At their desire,” he said, “ I gave them, a meeting, and candidly opened my mind to them. We had, not without mutual sorrow, about two hours’ discourse, in which I pro fessed myself ready to give my assent to the Scriptures, though not to their explanations ; judging I might justly use my reason v, here they so much used theirs, or other men’s. And I woidd have done anything that, with a. good conscience, I conlcl, rather than have broken from them, with whom I had lived so many years in friendly acquaint ance, and whom I loved and esteemed.” But upon their first conference with him, they immediately agreed the same day to cast him off, without consulting his Hock.
He had just lost his wife, who left him two young children, and he was overwhelmed with affliction. He went to London, hoping that the storm would soon blow over, and that he might return to the congregation. This, however, being out of the question, he came back to Dublin, and printed a defence of his opinions and his character, in con sequence of the odium that had been excited against him. This he called “An humble Inquiry into the Scripture Account of the Lord Jesus Christ.” He intended to return to England immediately after it was published, but some zealous Dissenters hearing of his plans resolved that he should not escape so easily. Two of them, a Presbyterian arid a Baptist, being on the grand jury, were for having him presented to that body. But a quicker and surer process was adopted. Mr. Caleb Thomas, the Baptist, obtained a
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warrant from the Lord Chief Justice, Sir R. Pyne, to seize Einlyn and his books, and he went himself with the keeper of Newgate to execute the warrant. Heavy bail was taken till Easter, when the grand jury found a true bill against him for blasphemy, one of his own deacons being on the jury. Just at that moment came out an answer to his book that had been seized, by his late colleague, Mr. Boyse, with an inflammatory preface, and not a word in favour of liberty of thought. The trial took place in June. Before it com menced, the prisoner was told by Sir R. Levins, an eminent barrister, that it was designed to “ run him down like a wolf without law or game.” His case was so odious that he found it hard to get counsel. If such a case occurred at the present day, the rirst men at the bar, such as Sergeant Arm strong, M.P., or Mr. Butt, would be proud of the opportunity of pleading for the prisoner. But at Emlyn’s trial several refused to have anything to do with the case, and those whom he did succeed in retaining “ were so interrupted and borne down that they would not attempt it more.” There was no evidence of the publication, but Boyse was sent for and put in the witness-box in order to extort from him the confession made by the prisoner to him and the ministers; and the amount of what he proved was that the prisoner declared “ what was judged by his brethren to be near to Arianism.” Six or seven of the bishops were present, in cluding the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, Dr. Marsh and Dr. King. The counsel for the Crown urged that strong presumption was as good as evidence, and the Lord Chief Justice told the jury the same, and pointed them to the authority of the bishops on the bench beside him. His counsel did not dare to speak on the merits of the case, and he was not permitted to speak himself. When the jury had retired, they were hurried and goaded into a verdict of “ Guilty. “ The Attorney-General, Robert Rochford, de manded that the prisoner should be sent to the pillory ; but in mercy to him, as “ a man of letters,” he was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, to pay a fine of £1,000 to the Queen, and to lie in gaol till it was paid. For five or six
102 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
weeks he was confined in a close room, with six beds, among common felons, and then removed to the Marshalsea, where he remained a close prisoner for two years. During all that time he had not a single visit from bishop, presbyter, or lavmaii to convert or console him, with the exception of Mr. Boyse and some of the poorer members of his congregation. “Of all men,” he wrote, “the Dissenting ministers of Dublin were the most destitute of kindness ; not one of them, ex cepting Mr. Boyse, vouchsafed me so much as that small office of humanity in visiting me when in prison ; nor had they so much pity on the soul of their erring brother — as they thought him — as to seek to turn him from the error of his way. rin tiliars, with whom I lived so many years
in intimate society, never made the attempt,” &c. At length, when it was found that the excessive fine of £1,000 was illegal, it was with much difficulty reduced to £70. And now comes the finishing touch of intolerance — an odious manifestation of cruelty and meanness in the name of charity. The Lord Primate, Dr. Narcissus Marsh, as the Queen’s Almoner, was entitled to a shilling in the pound of all such fines, and he demanded that it should be levied off the whole amount inflicted by the sentence. “ I thought,” says the poor victim of persecution, who remained steadfast to his convictions to the last, “ I thought his fees must have been reduced proportionately to her Majesty’s reducemeiit, and that the Church was to be as merciful as the State ; but I was mistaken herein. In short, after several applications and letters to him, he would have £20 of me, and so it was paid him, who thought it no blemish to his charity to take this advantage of the misery of one who, for conscience toward God, had endured grief.”*
Nearly twenty years after this — in 1719 — the Dublin Dissenting ministers engaged in negotiating the Toleration Act of that year, succeeded in obtaining the insertion of a clause, declaring that “ neither this Act, or any clause, article, or thing therein contained, shall extend, or be construed to extend, to give any ease, benefit, or advantage, to any per- * The Trial of the Rev. Thomas Emlyn, &c. By George Mathews, esq.
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son who, in his preaching or writing, shall deny the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity.” Never was the folly of intolerance more clearly demonstrated. This very congregation in Strand-street, which would have put its minister in the pillory, and nearly persecuted him to death, for being almost a Unitarian, itself soon after lapsed into Unitarianism. And mark the change ! One of its Unitarian ministers was the Rev. Mr. Plunket, whose son, William Conynham, became Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and whose grandson was Lord Plunket, late Bishop of Tuam. But for persecution, the Emlyns might have been as great a family as the Plunkets, and had Mr. Plunket lived in an age of intolerance, and been as noble in nature as Emlyn — the loss to the Church and State that would have thence ensued will be admitted by none more readily than by the Plunkets themselves.
It is only by the light of such historical cases that we can see the progress that society has made, and be able to estimate the blessings of civil and religious liberty which we now enjoy. Another illustration has just occurred. The Rev. Dr. Montgomery, who died recently, was, for about forty years, the leader of the Unitarians in Ireland, and headed a large secession from the synod of Ulster, which has resulted in the formation of several Unitarian bodies, having altogether forty-four ministers. All these ministers are paid by the State, some £75 and some ^100 a year each. In addition to his d^lOO a year, Megium Don-urn, Dr. Mont gomery, the champion of principles which the law in the last century branded as blasphemy and heresy, received ^150 or ^200 a year for distributing the State endowment among his brethren ; and it has just been announced that his widow and daughter have received from the Crown a pension of dS’lOO a year during the life of the survivor. What is most remarkable and suggestive in this instance of royal favour is the reason assigned for granting the pension, — for Dr. Montgomery’s “ services in the cause of civil and religious liberty.” What a comfort it would have been to “the martyred Emlyn,” languishing unfriended and forgotten in the noisome dungeon of the Marshalsea, if he could have
104 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
foreseen the days of Henry Montgomery, who was more influential with Whig Governments in Dublin Castle than even his great orthodox rival, Henry Cooke, was with the Tory Governments.
Congregations of Nonconformists were established in Dublin at a very early period after the Reformation. Before the reign of Charles II., many families of English Puritans and Scotch Presbyterians had settled there ; but they were more or less mixed up with the Established Church till 1662, when the passing of the Act of Uniformity compelled the conscientious to separate. Among these were a number of clergymen, including the Provost of Trinity College and several of the Fellows. Being men distinguished for their station, learning, and piety, many wealthy and some noble families seceded with them, and formed congregations which were called Presbyterian, though they were not strictly bound by the Presbyterian polity, but occupied a position between Presbyterianisin and Congregationalism. They were formed into seven congregations, which were very large and influential ; namely, Wood-street, afterwards Strand-street, Cooke-street, New-row, afterwards Eustace- street, Plunket-street, Capel-street,Usher’s-quay, and Abbey- street. The ministers had a Government stipend of o^l 00 a year each, which won Id be equal to £300 or ^?4QO at the present day. The number of the Presbyterian congregations in the early part of this century was reduced to four ; and of these two, Strand-street and Eustace-street, formerly the largest and most influential, had lapsed into Unitarianism, still retaining the common name, Presbyterian. Strand- street congregation, as we have seen, formerly consisted of thousands ; but although the congregations of Cook-street and Mary’s-abbey had merged into it, and although it was served by two pastors of singular ability, Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Drummond, the latter a highly accomplished scholar, the number of members in 1815 was only 560. The Eustace- street congregation could only count 200 members. The two orthodox Presbyterian congregations were Capel-street, afterwards called Mary’s-abbey, and Usher’ s-quay, into which
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•
the Plunket-street congregation had merged. The Mary’s- abbey Meeting-house was shut in out of view behind Capel- street, entered by a gateway under the houses. Usher’s-quay Meeting-house was also inclosed in the midst of old houses, as if “Nonconformity,” as well as Popery, was anxious to to hide itself from public notice.
When the Plunket-street Presbyterians moved to Usher’s- quay in 1774, the vacant meeting-house was occupied by a congregation of Independents, who received “supplies” from England for some years. Their first settled pastor was the Rev. William Cooper, of Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion. He was a man of great energy and ability, who had tremen dous power as a controversialist ; but though he attacked the Church of Rome vehemently, he was rather popular with Roman Catholics, who sometimes went to hear him in con siderable numbers. The congregation was for a long time large and flourishing, having schools and almshouses in connexion with it. Mr. Cooper’s son, the Rev. W. Haweis Cooper, also a man of superior ability, became the Inde pendent minister of a new chapel in King’s Inn-street, and the resident tutor of the Manor-street Academy or College, established by the Irish Evangelical Society for the education of ministers to labour in Ireland. At an early period an Independent Congregation was established in York-street, off Stephen’s-greeri, for which a large and respectable looking building was erected in the year 1808. For these several places, as well as for others throughout Ireland, the men and the money for a long time came from England ; and, indeed, Independency, which never seemed able to take firm root in the Irish soil, has been mainly supported by English funds sent through the committee of the Irish Evangelical Society in London. The Rev. Dr. Campbell once spoke of the Irish Independent Mission as “ploughing the sand.”
Methodism was introduced into Ireland about the middle of the last century. The two Wesleys, John and Charles, visited Dublin, Cork, and other towns. Protestants nocked to hear them ; but they were much annoyed by mobs of Roman Catholics. In Cork, Mr. Charles Wesley found it
106 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
necessary to prosecute the rioters, and twenty-eight deposi tions were laid before the grand jury in August, 1749. But the grand jury, instead of rinding true bills against the rioters, represented Wesley, and nine of his friends, as “persons of ill-fame, vagabonds, common disturbers of his Majesty’s peace, and prayed that they might be transported.” The consequence was that the persecuting mob paraded the streets in triumph, offering £5 reward for a “ Swaddler’s head.” When Mr. Wesley and his friends appeared in court to stand their trial, the judges apologised for the outrage on religious freedom, rebuked the bigotry of the grand jury, and dismissed the case. In. 1791, about the time of John Wesley’s death, his connexion in Ireland comprehended twenty-nine circuits, sixty-seven preachers, and 14,000 members. In 1 802, the number of Wesley an meeting-houses in Ireland was 122. In 181(5 the Irish Conference reported forty-eight circuits, 133 preachers, and nearly 29,000 members.
Other sects were represented in Dublin at an early period of their existence — the Baptists, the Moravians, the Friends; and some had their origin in this city, namely, the Walker- ites, the Kellyites, and others. The total number of Dissenters in Dublin in the year 181(3 was 7,491, distributed as follows : — Orthodox Presbyterians, 2,200 ; Unitarians, 700 ; Presby terian Seceders, 140; Independents, 1,700; Methodists, 1,420; Moravians, 230; Baptists, 150; Friends, C50; Walker’s, Kelly’s, and foreign Protestants, 240. There is a record of collections for schools and other charitable purposes in the different places of worship in Dublin in the year 1815, which is interesting and suggestive. Protestant churches, £7,278 10s. 7Jc7, ; Roman Catholic chapels, .£3,300 9s. 4*7. ; Presbyterian meeting-houses, .£1,259 18s. Id.; Independent ditto, £1,100; Methodist ditto, £388 6s. Id.; Baptist ditto, £190;— total, £13,517 4s. Id
Before the year 1840 there were two bodies of orthodox Presbyterians in Ireland, located chiefly in Ulster— the Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod. They were then united in one body, called “The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland,” which, in 1856, comprised
EEVIEW OF THE PAST. 107
510 congregations, managed under thirty-seven Presbyteries. The ministers are supported by voluntary contributions, the rents of seats or pews, and the Regium Donum. This was first granted by Charles II. in 1672, who gave ^600 of “Secret Service-money” to be distributed in equal portions among the ministers annually. The grant was discontinued towards the close of his reign and during the reign of James II. ; but it was renewed and doubled by William III. In 1784 the amount was increased to o£?2,200, and in 1792 to ^5, 000. In 1803 a classification was made according to the number and importance of the congregations — the first class being £100 ; the second, £75 ; and the third, £50, Irish currency. When the first-class men die out, the arrangement is that their successors will receive only £75. The money is voted annually, so that it is no longer a royal gift, but a Parliamentary grant. The total amount voted last year was £40,808 2s. 4?d. But this sum is shared with three Unitarian bodies — “The Remonstrant Synod of Ulster,” “ The Synod of Munster,” and the “Presbytery of Antrim,” having between them about fifty ministers. Their congregations are not large, but they are generally influential and wealthy. A few years ago these tlrree bodies united to form the “General Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Association of Ireland,” for the promotion of their common principles, “the right of private judgment and non-subscription to creeds and con fessions of faith.” Their doctrines are supposed to vary from the high Arianism for which Emlyii suffered to views of Christ bordering on those of Renan.
There is no doubt that the Presbyterians of Ulster are as well able as as any body of Christians in England or Scotland to support their own ministers. But it seems to be a fixed idea with both ministers and people that their Church could scarcely exist without the Regium Donum ; and the Rev. John Rogers, late Moderator of the General Assembly, made repeated efforts to get the grant increased to a uniform rate of d£?100 a year for each minister, and that the endowment should be placed upon the Consolidated Fund — not an un reasonable demand, if the Established Church be maintained,
108 IRELAND ANT) HER CHURCHES.
for the Presbyterians are nearly as numerous as the Episco palians, and are quite equal to them in loyalty, intelligence, industry, and good conduct. No doubt, if Parliament should refuse the Rcrjunn- Doit urn, and throw the Presbyterian ministers upon the voluntary system, making them wholly dependent for support upon their own people, who generally pay their ministers rath or grudgingly, the Establishment would lose a most powerful support, and would have to bear the onset of an energetic agitation from the north. The total number of ministers connected with the Wesleyan body in Ireland is 1 .”)5, and of their members 1 8,749. There is another body of the Wesleyan family, called the Primitive Methodist Society, which has in Ireland about 8,000 or 9,000 members.
Returning to Dublin, I find by the last census that the total number of Presbyterians throughout the city parishes is 4,875, without counting two good congregations in the suburbs, one at Sandy mount and the other at Rath gar. The number of Wesley ans in Dublin is 1,8.97; of Independents, 392; of Baptists, 185; of Friends, 302; and of Jews, 324. From these statistics it is clear that the Church has absorbed nearly all the Dissenters except the Presbyterians of the General Assembly. These are constantly recruited from Ulster and Scotland, and consist to a large extent of prosperous mer chants and thriving people in various branches of business.
Some time ago, with the help of a legacy from a wealthy widow named Magee,* the late Rev. Richard Dill first brought his church into the face of day by the erection of a handsome building on Ormond-quay ; and more recently, the Alary ‘s-abbey congregation, which was” far the most wealthy, emerged from its gloomy enclosure in Capel-street, and removed to a magnificent new church in Rutland-square,
* Mrs. Magee, the widow of a Presbyterian clergyman, had attached herself to the Established Church, till Mr. Dill devoted himself to her spiritual good. The result was that she built him a church, and gave £40,000 to Presbyterian missions, and £20,000 or ,£30,000 more for a Presbyterian College at Londonderry, called the Magee College, with a handsome sum for the residuary legatees, Mr. Dill and Mr. S. M. Greer, The money was left her by a brother.
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which cost £12,000 or £14,000, and was erected solely by the munificence of Mr. Findlater, a grocer and wine mer chant. Some of the ministers of. the Mary’s-abbey congre gation were distinguished * men. The late Dr. Carlile, who succeeded Dr. Horner, became the first Resident or paid Commissioner of the National Board of Education, and had much to do with the compilation of the school-books. It spoke well for the liberality of the late Roman Catholic Archbishop Murray, that he worked for many years harmo niously 011 the Board of Education with a Presbyterian minister in that responsible position ; and it shows how highly Dr. Carlile was esteemed, when his profession did not constitute a barrier to his appointment.
With the exception of the Presbyterians and the Wes- leyans, Protestant dissent in Dublin may be regarded as all but extinct. In the early part of this century Church people crowded to hear popular preachers belonging to the Independent, Baptist, and Wesley an denominations, because, as they said, they had not “the Gospel “ in the parish churches, and they were repelled by the dull formality, carelessness, and deathlike coldness which reigned there. But as soon as extra-parochial churches were erected with popular ministers, preaching extemporaneously, they returned to the Church, and the Dissenting places of worship were gradually deserted. The Wesleyans, however, owing to their peculiar organization, kept their hold on the people to a large extent. The Presbyterians do not regard themselves as Dissenters, but as a branch of the Established Church of Scotland, planted in this country, which originally shared the tithes with the Episcopalians, and which has been all along recognised and endowed by the State, with the ex ception of a period of exclusion during the tyranny of the Stuarts, when their ministers were expelled, prosecuted, and incarcerated even by such enlightened bishops as Jeremy Taylor. During the existence of the Penal Code also, though not suffering like Roman Catholics, the Presbyterians were kept by the dominant sect in a position of humiliation and subordination, and were induced even to forego their rights
HO IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and liberties to some extent, under the pretext that this was necessary in order to secure “the Protestant succession” in England, and “the Protestant interest “ in Ireland. The spirit of submission and the habit of subserviency to the ascendant oligarchy of Churchmen, which monopolized all the powers and privileges of the State, have continued with some mitigation to our own time. The relation of Non conformist churches to the Establishment in this country, politically considered, was like that of skiffs following in the wake of a man-of-war. They never dared to take any inde pendent political action.
The Presbyterians, though in Ulster they far outnumber the Episcopalians, have not a single representative in the present Parliament. Several gentlemen of position and mark among them offered themselves as candidates, but their own people voted against them in favour of Churchmen and Tories belonoino- to the °reat aristocratic families founded
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by PresbyterianSv In Dublin it was deemed a monstrous thing for a Presbyterian or Protestant Dissenter to vote for a Liberal candidate. But the spell was broken at the last election, when Presbyterians joined with Eoman Catholics and liberal Churchmen in returning a Quaker, Mr. Jonathan Pirn. And they also voted for the Hon. Captain White, the unsuccessful Liberal candidate for the county. There was one magic word which prevented all liberal manifestations among the Protestants in Dublin and Ulster — Popery, Popery, Popery ! The Pope was the perpetual bugbear — a great devouring “beast,” which threatened to swallow up all our institutions, not excepting the throne, and to gulp down first of all the Irish Protestant Establishment, which would render the rest an easy prey.
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CHAPTER VI.
THE Rev. A. Cogan, of Navan, author of a learned work on the “Diocese of Meath,”* of which only the first volume has appeared, becomes eloquent and excited when he contemplates the ruins that abound in this part of the country. It may be instructive to quote some passages from his book, because it is in a similar strain that a great many of the priests address their flocks from the altar, producing a state of mind which is an element of no small power in the popular discontent. “ The parish of Dunshaughlin,” he says, “ is encompassed on all sides with ruins of churches, abbeys, and chapels of ease. The green mounds of the dead, the traditional reverence of the people, the drooping willow, or the hoary ash-tree, spread ing her branches over these consecrated spots, alone mark the sites of many a sanctuary which demons in human shape have uprooted and profaned. The gray walls or ivy-mantled ruins of others stand still, records of past ages — heirlooms of piety and charity — speaking to the heart, and recalling to memory those ages of faith and philanthropy, when, says Dr. Johnson, ‘ Ireland was the school of the west, the quiet habitation of sanctity and literature.’ “ Speaking of the abbey of Slane, he says — “ Seated on a lofty hill, where St. Patrick kindled the paschal fire, clothed in ivy, surrounded by the richest pastures, within view of some of the most ancient pagan and Christian antiquities, and looking down on the blue waters of the Boyne — commanding the most extensive view of Meath — the ruins of Slane Abbey impress the beholder with religious solemnity, and carry us back to those ages when its aisles, now deserted, were thronged with worshippers, and when the piety and learning of its monastic teachers attracted numbers to its halls.” Again, referring to
* “ The Diocese of Meath, Ancient and Modern.” By the Rev. A. Cogan, Catholic Curate, Navan. 1862.
112 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Kells, Mr. Cogari remarks— “ From the second year of Eliza beth this town sent two members to the Irish Parliament till the ill-fated Union, when the borough was disfranchised, and £15,000, awarded as compensation, were given to the Earl of Bective, Two disastrous events led to the decline of Kells. The one, the confiscation of the wealthy religious houses, where poverty \va,s relieved, numberless artisans employed, and the lands of which were let at moderate rents. The other was common to all Irish towns, the loss of our national independence.” Taking a more comprehensive view, the historian exclaims : — “ Clonard indeed is gone, Lisinore is gone, Armagh, Clomnacnoise, Bangor, Glenda- lough, Kildare, Devenish, all these ancient landmarks have been swept away. The hand of the spoiler has torn up these sanctuaries of the faith and charity of our fathers. Their halls are no longer filled; the door of hospitality is no longer open to the poor man, the traveller, and the wayfarer. Silence — the silence of the grave — reigns around those holy places, where the cheerful laugh of youth, the pious chant of the monks, the sacred song of the holy sacrifice, amidst incense and ceremony, once resounded. All that the powers of this world could effect has been done. The monastery, the gorgeous temple, the abbey church, have disappeared. The abbey lands have been seized, the patrimony of the poor was confiscated. As if to show the strength of God’s Word, the interposition of his providence and his merciful designs for the Irish nation, all the external aids, which the charity and philanthropy of past ages had conferred on religion, were permitted by him to be torn away.”*
This is the bright side of the picture of monastic life, and it is not surprising that when a priest holds the brush of the artist, it should be highly coloured. But the picture has a dark side, too. In the first place, most of the monuments of piety, the destruction of which he deplores, had no exis tence in those ages when, according to Dr. Johnson, Ireland was the quiet habitation of sanctity and literature. On the contrary, the greatest of them were erected in times when “ The Diocese of Meath, Ancient and Modern,” page 8.
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the country was very far from being a “ quiet habitation,” and by the race who had been its invaders and despoilers. There was much good in those monastic institutions, but the good was not unmixed. It cannot serve the interests of humanity or of society to hide from our view half the facts of history, and argue from the other as if they were the whole. Historians who do this are as unsafe teachers as novelists who have but two sets of characters in their books, angels and demons. In the convent, as well as in the world, human nature presented a mixture of virtue ; and vices — a picture of light and shade, not always “ well accorded,” the light being sometimes very brilliant, and the shade often in heavy masses. Besides, it is impossible to judg’e from what monasteries and nunneries are now in Protestant countries where Rome antagonizes with competing and censorious sects, with respect to what those institutions were when all Christendom was Catholic, when the Church was everywhere established, when bishops were feudal barons, when abbats, monks, and friars were extensive landowners, when religious houses were the homes of wealth and luxury, and when society around was in a state of disorder bordering on dis solution. We may be able to form a better idea, though not an exact one, of the state of the religious world before the Reformation by the cases of Spain and Italy, where Catholic Governments have abolished monastic institutions on account of radical and incurable abuses, converting their immense landed property to national purposes. The late Bishop Doyle, the ablest modern champion of Catholicity, a prelate who may be called the Irish Bossuet, and who was himself educated in Spain, expressed a very decided opinion that it would have been a great blessing to that country if its wealthy and luxurious monastic establishments were abolished.
There is a great deal that is instructive about this subject in the history of caricature in the Middle Ages. Just as our Punch presents weekly true pictures, if exaggerated, of the follies and vices of the day, so the artists of the Middle Ages described the follies and vices of their times ; and it is
I
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
remarkable that the clergy, and particularly the friars and monks, were the most popular subjects of their pictorial satire ; indeed, they were the stock models of pride, gluttony, intemperance, and other vices; and what is very extraordi nary is, that such pictures were found most frequently orna menting the interiors of ecclesiastical buildings and their sacred furniture, as well as in the embellishments of illu minated books and records which were often the work of ecclesiastics, and were always under the eyes of the Church authorities. Besides, the religious ceremonies which Roman Catholics hold most sacred were often publicly ridiculed and burlesqued; and the artists who did this with most out rageous profanity, were the most popular with the Catholic multitude. Mr. Wright remarks that two favourite subjects of caricature among the Anglo-Saxon artists were the clergy and the Evil One. “ We have abundant evidence that from the eighth centurv downwards neither the Anglo-Saxon
c5 *J
clergy nor the Anglo-Saxon nuns were generally objects of much respect among the people ; and their character and the
manner of their lives sufficiently account for it
As we proceed we shall see the clergy continuing to furnish a butt for the shafts of satire through all the Middle Ages.”* Such subjects as the following are frequently found on the carved seats or misereres in the stalls of old cathedrals and cathedral churches, and on the painted glass of church win- dows: — The fox in the pulpit with the ecclesiastical hood and cowl ; the fox turned monk dressed in ecclesiastical costume, and carrying home two or three geese ; demons tripping up intriguing monks and casting them into a river, or into “ hell mouth ;” foxes saying mass, &c. There is a story told by Odo de Cerington, the popular fabulist, to the effect that one day the wolf died, and the lion called the animals together to celebrate his obsequies. “The hare carried the holy water, hedgehogs bore the candles, the goats rang the bells, the moles dug the grave, the foxes carried the corpse on the bier, the bear celebrated mass, the
* “ A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art.” By T. Wright, esq., &c. 1865. P. 53.
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ox read the Gospel, and the ass the Epistle. When the mass was concluded the animals made a splendid feast out of the goods of the deceased, and wished for such another funeral.” Our satirical ecclesiastic makes an application of this story which telJs little to the credit of the monks of his time. “So it frequently happens,” he says, “that when some rich extortioner or a usurer dies, the abbat or prior of a convent of beasts, i.e., of men living like beasts, causes them to assemble. For it commonly happens that in a great convent of black or white monks (Benedictines or Augustiiiiaiis) there are none but beasts — lions by their pride, foxes by their craftiness, goats by their incontinence, asses by their sluggishness, hedgehogs by their asperity, hares by their timidity, because they were cowardly where there was no fear, and oxen by the laborious cultivation of their land.”* A similar story was found represented in the sculptured ornamentation of Strasbourg Cathedral. An engraving of this was made and published by a reformer in 1580, but the whole impression was seized and burned by the common hangman. Mr. Wright gives cases of popular demonstra tions and theatrical representations, showing that religion in the Middle Ages had fallen into the greatest possible contempt ivith the masses of the people, and also with the educated classes among the laity. He remarks that, “al though these performances were proscribed by the ecclesias tical laws, they were not discountenanced by the ecclesiastics themselves, who, on the contrary, indulged as much in after-dinner amusements as anybody. The laws against profane songs are often directed especially at the clergy; and it is evident that among the Anglo-Saxons as well as on the Continent, not only the priests and monks, but the nuns also in their love of such amusements, far trangressed the bounds of decency.” On the character of the nuns among the Anglo-Saxons, and indeed of the inmates of the monastic houses generally, Mr. Wright refers his readers “to the excellent and interesting volume by Mr. John Trupp, ‘ The Anglo-Saxon Home : a History of the Domestic Insti-
* Wright, p. 80.
12
11G IRELAND AND HKU ChLUllCHES.
tutions and Customs of England from the Fifth to the Eleventh Century.’ “
If we may trust contemporary records, the Anglo-Normans were no better than the Anglo-Saxons, and whatever may be said for the pre-eminence of Irish female virtue, it must be admitted that the Irish conventual establishments Avere not quite free from the irregularities which abounded in other countries. There was certainly room for reform, and for a better distribution and adaptation of church property of all sorts to the purposes for which it was designed. Richly-endowed communities may be active enough while they are subject to some powerful external stimulus, or to a severe and vigilant authority; but the whole history of the Church proves that when such communities are left to them selves, they gradually sink into a state of sloth and self- indulgence. Nevertheless those religious establishments were the only educational institutions, and the only asylums for the poor, and the stranger, and the wayfarer, which then existed. Their inmates recognized the great principles and obligations of Christian charity, and they did not forget that they enjoyed the property as trustees for the people, and for the poor who gathered around them. They were always resident; they spent their incomes on the spot; they gave employment, relieved distress, and visited the sick. It is plain, therefore, that when those institutions were de molished, when their property was confiscated, and seized by rapacious individuals for their own benefit, while the inmates were scattered abroad without compensation or provision — a great calamity was inflicted upon the country. Nothing was substituted for the institutions thus destroyed —no schools, no hospitals, no infirmaries, no asylums — no provision of any kind for the poor disinherited people, who were flung like weeds out of the confiscated lands, and left to perish on the highways.
The efforts made by these disinherited people and their clergy, thrown wholly upon them for support, to supply themselves with such necessary institutions, have been ex- * Wright, p. 44.
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traordinary. In England, the poor laws were established immediately after the Reformation, and the workhouse, to a certain extent, supplied the place of the monastery ; but nearly two hundred and fifty years had elapsed before a similar provision was made for the Irish poor, though many times more destitute than the English. The consequence was a numerous race of “beggars,” vagrant families, who roamed over the country, living upon the poor farmers, but excluded from the abodes of the gentry by well-guarded gates and vigilant house-dogs, which knew their duty so well that they could scent a beggar half a mile off. The famine of 1S47 swept away most of this vagrant race, and about the same time the Poor-law came into operation, bringing relief no doubt in the form of food and shelter, but entailing fearful demoralization, by crowding all sorts of characters together, and violating still further the laws of nature by the compulsory separation of parents and children as well as husbands and wives.
Those who would understand the state of Ireland, and legislate for it wisely, should consider well the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in this country since 1829, and the moral effect of that progress on the spirit of the community. When we reflect upon this we shall not feel surprised that the present generation of Roman Catholics, clergy and laity, in view of their own achievements and self-elevation, should be unwilling to be bound by declara tions, promises, or pledges made by a broken-spirited race and impoverished Church during the arduous struggle for emancipation. The right or wrong of a state of feeling is one thing, the state of facts which gives rise to it is another thing ; of the former it is not my province now to judge, the latter it is my business to report. Dr. Doyle did more than any prelate of his day — more, indeed, than all the Irish prelates put together — by his writings and influence to achieve the work of emancipation; but he was a man of energetic action, as well as a powerful writer and speaker. He had one of those moral natures which can never rest while surrounded by abuses and disorders that they have
118 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the power to correct — to which meanness, feebleness, and deformity are intolerable when there is a possibility of replacing them by dignity, power, beaut}’, grandeur. He was, therefore, the originator of that course of ecclesiastical renovation, material and spiritual, which has since his day produced such wonderful results ; and his “monument in stone,” the cathedral in Carlo w, presented a model and an example which roused emulation in his brethren, and showed what could bo accomplished under the greatest difficulties by the faith and courage of energetic minds. To such minds as Dr. Doyle’s, indeed, posterity owes nearly all the good it inherits ; their thoughts fructify in blessings, in geometrical progression, to all generations.
On Easter Monday, 1828, Dr. Doyle, attired in his epis copal robes, laid the firwt stone of his new cathedral. “This splendid edifice,” says Mr. Fitzpatrick, “was projected and attempted under circumstances which would have discou raged any ordinary person. Thatched cabins had long been used for the celebration of the divine mysteries, and many persons looked to a comfortable slated brick-and -mortar church as a step in the march of progress more desirable than practicable. Catholicism still lay bound in penal fetters. Dr. Doyle had no funds collected to defray the expenses of building. His own scanty means and those of the clergy had been encroached upon to the uttermost in providing food and clothing for the famishing people, and in erecting school-houses for the education of the peasant youth. The bishop knew, however, that he who once begins a work has half accomplished it, and trusting in the first place to Him in whose honour the cathedral was to be raised, and in the next to the fidelity of that flock of whom he was the pastor, Dr. Doyle, full of hope and manly resolution, planted the first stone as we have described.” He lived but six years after this event, and yet he had the happiness of officiating in it on many occasions before his death. The clergyman who preached his funeral sermon there exclaimed: — “How often on that altar have I beheld this great high priest, lofty and dignified as Simeon of old, when he stood in the
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sanctuary, clothed with brightness and surrounded by the glorious sons of Aaron.” In the Biographie Universelle there is the following notice of this church : — “La cathedrale de Carlow est sans coiitredit le plus beau monument eccle- siastique qni ait ete eleve en Irelande dans le dix-iieuvierne siecle. Depuis plusieurs annees il ressamblait par tous les moyens qui sont a la disposition d’un dignitaire de 1’eglise, les fonds ndcessaires pour cette belle fondation, et Ton peut dire que sans son influence personellc, sans restimc et 1’ad- miration qu’il inspirait, la cathe’drale serait encore clans les e’pures de 1’architecte.” The late Mr. Thackeray, so satirical, if not cynical, about most things Irish, could not restrain his admiration of this cathedral when lie visited the country in 1811. In the “Irish Sketch-Book” he wrote: — “The Catholics point to the structure with considerable pride. It was the first, I believe of the many handsome cathedrals for their worship which have been built of late years in this country by the noble contributions of the poor man’s penny, and by the untiring energies and sacrifices of the clergy. Bishop Doyle, the founder of the church, has the place of honour within it; nor, perhaps, did any Christian pastor ever merit the affection of his flock more than that great and high-minded man. He was the best champion the Catholic Church and cause ever had in Ireland — in learning, and admirable kindness, and virtue, the best example to the clergy of his religion ; and if the country is now filled with schools, where the humblest peasant in it can have the benefit of a liberal and wholesome education, it owes this great boon mainly to his noble exertions, and to the spirit which they awakened.”
Dr. Doyle saw all the importance to the Catholic cause of the Clare election, and therefore gave O’Comiell his decided support. A short letter from the bishop called forth from the great agitator the following burst of gratitude : — “ If I had spent twenty-eight centuries instead of twenty-eight years in the service of my country, those sentiments ex pressed in that letter would amply reward me. One spirit animates us all, and we have the prayers of that truly pious
120 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
prelate for our success. The approbation of Dr. Doyle will brino- to our cause the united voice of Ireland. I trust it
O
will be the vox pojndi, vox Dei”
The letter produced a very different effect on Lord Anglesey, who was then Viceroy. Enclosing it to Sir Robert Peel, he said : — “I fear the Clare election will end ill. Dr. Doyle’s letter to Mr. O’Connell is most mischievous. I, however, still hope that most of the other bishops set their faces against his proceedings.” But another writer recorded the result in the following terms : — “ The priest hood and people heartily united, and moved as one man by the magnificent appeal of the patriot prelate, J, K. L., stood together and could not be divided.” Years after, Sir Robert Peel himself acknowledged that the Clare election supplied the manifest proof of an abnormal and unhealthy condition of the public mind in Ireland — the manifest proof that the sense of a common grievance, and the sympathies of a com mon interest, were beginning to loosen the ties which connect different classes of men in friendly relations to each other — to weaken the force of local and personal attachments, and to unite the scattered elements of society into a homogeneous and disciplined mass, yielding willing obedience to the assumed authority of superior intelligence hostile to the law, and to the Government which administered it.
These are weighty words. Mr. Thackeray remarked that the people pointed with pride to the Carlow cathedral. They do point with pride to all such edifices which have been raised in towering grandeur ever since in all parts of the country, overtopping and eclipsing the cathedrals of the Establishment. If British policy and Protestant principles had permitted the erection of Roman Catholic churches by parliamentary grants under the direction of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners or the Board of Works, instead of the national pride, which is a sort of defiance to England, there might have been inspired the feeling of national gratitude, while the hierarchy would have been content with buildings less ostentatious, and showing less of the spirit of rivalry in their magnitude and style of architecture. At the same time,
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 121
those social bonds would have been strengthened, the loosening of which Sir Robert Peel so much deplored.
Some account may properly be introduced here of the revival which has taken place in the Roman Catholic Church during the last thirty or forty years, because we are reminded of it by the labours of the late Bishop Doyle with one of the Leinster dioceses. The celebrated signature J. K. L. re presents the words “ James, Kildarc and Leighlin,” those two dioceses being united in the Roman Catholic Church, while Leighlin and Ferns were united in the Established Church. Dr. Doyle was the ablest Roman Catholic divine of his day; he had a singularly honest mind, and was a man always actuated by strong convictions of duty ; he was, therefore, not less earnest as a Church reformer in his own communion than he was zealous as a champion of the “ Catholic cause” identified in his view with the cause of the Irish nation. In the valuable work on his life and times by Mr. Fitz- patrick,* there are no chapters more interesting than those which record the strenuous and indefatigable efforts of this eminent prelate to restore discipline and to introduce decency and dignity in the mode of conducting public worship in the diocese committed to his charge. It appears that it had been the custom to appoint very aged men to the episcopal office in the Irish Roman Catholic Church, and that o wing- to their infirmities and consequent inactivity great laxity of discipline prevailed among the priests. Many of the parish priests speculated in farming, and made money by it ; others attended races, and not a few hunted. “ They ejaculated “ Tally ho “ as often as “ Dominus vobiscum.” Their solemn black cloth and long clerical boots formed an unpleasant contrast “to the gay scarlet coats and white tops of their lay companions.” Dr. Doyle, who was a very young bishop, resolved to put a stop to all such irregularities. He pro hibited his clergy from attending places of public amuse ment. A priest must never appear on a race-course, unless it happened to be in his own parish. He also insisted that
* The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Right Rev. Dr. Doyle, By William J. Fitzpatrick, J.F. Dublin : James Duffy and Co.
122 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
they should give up farming, except on a very small scale. It appears that in every respect the priesthood were greatly secularized throughout the United Kingdom in their dress as well as in their habits. In England they almost all wore brown, and we are informed by the Eev. Dr. Hussenbeth, that the Rev. Joseph Berrington was the first to appear in a black coat, and he was blamed for needlessly exposing the clergy to insult and persecution. No splendid ceremonial was as yet adopted in Catholic chapels. At the first attempt to get up benediction at Oscott, they could procure no better incense than a little resin, which Weedall, being sacristan, scraped out of some broken knife handles in the kitchen. He adds, “ Little can Catholics who live in these days con ceive the state of things when we could hardly walk abroad without insult, when we said mass chiefly in garret chapels, and were occasionally hooted, and had stones thrown after us, as it has happened even to the present writer.” That state of things had passed away in. Ireland when Dr. Doyle became a bishop, and, instead of the spirit of persecution, a friendly and neighbourly feeling had grown up between the priests and Protestant gentry, and in many cases between them and the Protestant clergy. The parson and the priest often hunted together, dined together, drank together, and played cards together, and they were about equally negligent in respect to their official duties, which they performed, when unavoidable, in the most perfunctory and slovenly manner. There was particularly a disgraceful want of cleanliness in the places of worship, which was the more inexcusable on the part of the priests from, their belief in the sacrifice of the mass. Of such abuses Dr. Doyle was a stern reformer. Mr. Fitzpatrick tells us, that wherever he could lay his hand upon them he tore them up root and branch. He felt that the words addressed to the prophet were addressed em phatically to him : “ Behold this day I have set thee to root up and to pull down, and to destroy and to build and to plant.” If, after rebuking a priest for culpable carelessness, Dr. Doyle again found the vestments or altar clothes soiled or shabby, he tore them into ribbons, and the Mass-book not unfre-
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quently met the same fate. “ On his first visitation to a remote parish of Kildare he was disgusted to find the sacer dotal vestments soiled and threadbare, and deposited in a turf basket. Dr. Doyle admonished the priest, but without effect, for on the next visitation matters appeared precisely in the same posture. Tearing the chasuble in two pieces, he told the priest that, if unable to purchase a new one, which he greatly doubted, at least to make up the price in halfpence and pence among his flock. The old pastor’s habits were irrevocably formed, and he remained so utterly deaf to the young prelate’s wishes, that, instead of doing what had been prescribed, he got an old woman to reunite the pieces of the chasuble, and in this condition he used it until his death, which occurred soon after. The manner in which Dr. Doyle dealt with objectionable vestments on all subsequent occasions prevented the possibility of their again coming into use. He not unfrequently consigned them to the flames of the sacristy fire.” On another occasion, when he found all his admonitions and menaces totally disregarded, he came out of the .sacristy and thus addressed the congre gation : — “ I regret there cannot be mass to-day. I have repeatedly impressed on your pastor the necessity and duty of providing himself with vestments befitting the dignity of the holy sacrifice. He has not only neglected to do so, but he has thought fit to omit to call on you for that trifling aid which would have at once obtained the amount needed ;” saying which he destroyed the vestments which had so long been a cause of general disedification.*
It was not through poverty that the parish priests appeared in such shabby vestments on the altar. Dr. Doyle, during his examination before a committee of the House of Lords, stated that he had required a return of the amount of their incomes, and he found that there were three who had £500 a year each, fourteen who had from £200 to £300, and in the remaining parishes, the sums varied from £100 to £200. It is not unlikely that the amounts were understated, or that some important items were omitted ; for one of those very * Fitzpatrick, vol. i., p. 277-8,
Xt) AND 11K11 C’HUilCHES.
priests whose vestments the “bishop had torn in pieces left the sum of £8,000 to the Carlow College at his death in 1843. Tlie utter neglect of duty on the part of the priest hood forty years ago is strikingly exhibited in the case of Portarlington, one of the best towns in the county of Kildare, and then containing a population of !),()()() Roman Catholics. Yet for nearly twenty years there had been no confirmation in that parish. When visited by Dr. Doyle for the purpose of administering that sacrament, there were few present to receive it under sixty years of age. “Good God!” exclaimed the “bishop, “can these persons shnid in need of confirmation T On a subsequent occasion he re turned to confirm the young people, and the multitude was so great that the chapel could not contain, them, and Lord Portarlington threw open Enio Park for their accommodation, and on that day 1 ,.”>()() persons were confirmed. Mr. Fitz- patrick snys that this scene may be regarded “as a random sample of what widely took place elsewhere.” The bishop himself, writing long afterwards, to a clerical friend, about his labours at this time, said, “James, you know what 1 suffered in mind. My “brain was bursting with the myriad dictates of duty which crowded into it.”
The most powerful means which Dr. Doyle used for the revival of religion among his priests was the “ Spiritual Retreat,” which consisted of protracted meetings for spiritual exercises, in which he led their devotions, and laboured to rouse them to a sense of their responsibility by soul-stirring exhortations. The Rev. Mr. Delaney describes a scene of this kind which he witnessed in 1820, when, at the invitation of this youthful bishop, 1,000 priests, and nearly every prelate in Ireland, assembled at Carlow. He conducted the retreat unaided, and preached three times every day for a week. “ These sermons,” says Mr. Delaney, “ were of an extraordinarily impressive character. We never heard anything to equal them before or since. The duties of the ecclesiastical state were never so eloquently or so effectively expounded. His frequent application and exposition of the most intricate texts of Scripture delighted us : we thought
HE VIEW OF THE PAST. 125
he was inspired. I saw the venerable Archbishop Troy weep like a child, and raise his hands in thanksgiving. At the conclusion of the retreat he wept again, and kissed his co adjutor with more than a brother’s affection.” “ More than forty years have elapsed,” observes another priest, “but my recollection of all that Dr. Doyle said and did on that occa sion is fresh and vivid. He laboured like a giant, and with the zeal of an apostle. There he stood, [ike some commanding archangel, raising and depressing the thousand hearts which hung fondly on. his words. I can never forget that tall, majestic fio’ure pointiii” the way to heaven, with an arm that seemed
O O t/
as if it could have wielded thunderbolts ; nor the lofty serenity of countenance so eloquent of reproach one minute, so radiant of hope the next. It seemed as if by an act of his will a torrent of grace miraculously descended from Heaven, and by the same mediating agency was dispensed around. It was a glorious spectacle in its aspect and results. The fruit wa.s no ephemeral growth or continuance, but celestially enduring. To this day I profit by a recollection of that salutary retreat.” “ For the ten days that the retreat lasted,” observes the Rev. Dr. 0’ Council, “ Dr. Doyle knew no rest. His soul was on lire in the sacred cause. He was determined to reform widely. His falcon eye sparkled with zeal; the powers of his intellect were applied to the work with telling effect. At the close of one of his most passionate exhortations he knelt down on a priedieu immediately before me. The vigorous workings of his mind, and the intense earnestness of purpose within, affected even the outward man — big drops of perspiration stood upon his neck, and his rochet was almost saturated.”
While thus uroino- forward the work of ecclesiastical
O O
reform with such vehement zeal, he was the most active of all the Roman Catholic prelates in his exertions in the cause of civil and religious liberty, and in the same year he re ceived from Sir Henry Parnell (afterwards Lord Coiigleton) the following letter : —
“ MY LOUD, — Having closed my election with so trium phant a majority, I lose no time in returning your lordship
126 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
my warmest thanks for the very powerful support you gave, by expressing so warmly and so decidedly your opinions to your clergy. I shall never forget the services which they have rendered, by resisting with such promptness, unanimity, and effect, the outcry which was raised against me on account of the new election law.”
It was not likely that such a bishop as Dr. Doyle would be contented with the old style of buildings which were then used as places of worship. He strove to get new chapels erected throughout the parishes of his dioceses, and in some cases where the parish priests were reluctant or dilatory, he tore the thatch off the roof with his own hands ; and he soon set an example to all the other bishops by erecting a beautiful cathedral in Carlow. Writing to his brother, the Rev. Peter Doyle, he said that he had settled his plan of building; adding, “ That is the only monument In stone I intend to leave after me.” He has left a more enduring monument in his noble character, and in the masterly works he wrote in defence of the rights and liberties of his country.
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CHAPTER VII.
I CLOSE this review of the past with a brief sketch of the efforts already made by the Imperial Parliament to settle the Irish Church question.
Ireland continued, during 1831 and 1832, in a very unsettled state. The restraint imposed by the Catholic Association during the emancipation struggle was relaxed when the object was attained, and when Mr. O’Connell was absent from the country, attending his parliamentary duties. The consequence was that the people, suffering destitution in some cases, and in others irritated by local grievances, gave vent to their passions in vindictive and barbarous out rages. O’Connell himself was not in a mood to exert himself much in order to produce a more submissive spirit in the peasantry, even if he had the power. He was exasperated by his collisions with Mr. Stanley, by whom he was treated in a spirit of defiance, not unmingled with scorn ; so that the great agitator was determined to make him and the government he represented feel his power. If the Earl of Derby (when, as Mr. Stanley, he was Chief Secretary of Ire land) had the experience Avhich he now possesses, he would doubtless have adopted a more diplomatic tone in Parliament, and a more conciliatory spirit in his Irish administration. His character as it appeared to the Irish Roman Catholics, sketched by O’Connell, was a hideous caricature. A more moderate and discriminating Irish sketch of him represented the Chief Secretary as possessing a judgment of powerful penetration, with a facility in mastering details, with a temper somewhat reserved and dictatorial. Popularity was not his idol; instead of the theatrical smile and plastic posture of his predecessors, there was a knitted brow and a cold manner. He loved labour, and the impress of care and work was stamped upon his features. “ For the ordinary
128 IRELAND AND HULl CHURCHES.
recreations of men, he had an austere contempt ; he gave few dinners, and the freaks and foibles of fashion were sternly condemned in his careless dress. In his energetic tread across the flags of the castle-yard, and the authoritative strength of his masculine voice, self-respect and self-reliance were prominently perceptible. Amongst the gentry he acquired a reputation for eccentricity. He Jived and walked alone. Shell tolls us that he lias often known him to walk fifteen miles along the high road with a staff in his hand, and a slouched hat on his head, and that he was designated as the ‘odd gentleman from England.’“ Mr. Stanley left much undone in Ireland. But this candid Catholic writer gave him credit for having accomplished much, not only in correcting what was evil, but in establishing what was good. He is praised for putting down Orange processions, and for “the moral courage with which he grappled with the hydra of the Church Establishment.” He created as well as destroyed, and “his creations were marked with peculiar efficiency.” “The Irish Board of Works sprang up under his auspices. The Shannon navigation scheme at last became a reality, and the proselytism of the Kildare-place Society received a fatal check by the establishment of the national system of education. The political philippics which Baron Smith had been in the habit of enunciating from the bench, were put a stop to by Mr. Stanley. He viewed the practice with indignation, and trenchantly reprobated it in the House of Commons. It ought to be added that Mr. Stanley built a house in Tipperary, chiefly with the object of giving employment to the poor.”* It has been often remarked that the Chief Secretary for Ireland, on his arrival in Dublin, is always surrounded by men, each of whom has his peculiar specific for the evils of the country. But Mr. Shell says that Mr. Stanley, instead of listening to such counsel with the usual “ sad civility, invariably intimated with some abrupt jeer, bordering on mockery, his utter disregard of the advice, and his very slender estimate of the adviser.” He made an exception, however, in favour of the then celebrated “ J. K. L.” a Fitzpatrick’s Life and Times of Bishop Doyle,” vol. ii., p. 252.
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 129
He acknowledged a letter from Dr. Doyle, on the education question, with warm expressions of thanks for the sugges tions contained in it, and a wish to see him on his arrival in Dublin.
Towards O’Comiell, however, Mr. Stanley seems to have cherished a sort of antipathy. They exercised mutual repul sion upon one another, and they never came into collision without violent irritation. Lord Grey was disposed to treat the agitator in a different spirit. Mr. O’Oomiell having stated publicly “ that the highest offices of the law were within his power,” referring to his refusal of the offer of Chief Baron, Lord Grey remarked in the House of Lords, “I may subject myself to reproach and censure from noble lords opposite ; but I have no hesitation in stating that knowing the extent of his abilities and power of rendering service to the Government, I should have been very glad if it could have been done, to detach him from the course in which he is now engaged, and attach him to the service of his country.” On a subsequent occasion, in April, 1832, Lord Grey, in replying to a charge of wishing to give a bribe to O’Comiell, repeated his contradiction that an offer had been made to him of a place in the Government, and said that he would have been rejoiced if any attempt at conciliation on the part of the Government had had the effect of inducing Mr. O’Comiell to pursue a line of conduct which would have been materially conducive to the peace and tranquillity of Ireland, adding, “ There is not, I am persuaded, any person who hears me, who looks at the situation of that country, and considers the weight and power of that gentleman’s influence, who does not agree with me that it would have been most desirable, if practicable, to bring him over to the cause of good order.”
Lord Cloncurry thus vividly sketches the agitation and its causes at this period : “From the Union up to the year 1829, the type of British colonial government was the order of the day. The Protestants were upheld as a superior caste, and paid in power and official emoluments for their services in the army of occupation. During the second viceroyalty
K
130 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of Lord Anglesea, the effort was made by him to evoke the energies of the whole nation for its own regeneration. That effort was defeated by the conjoint influence of the cowardice of the English cabinet, the petulance of Mr. Stanley, and the unseasonable violence and selfishness of the lately eman cipated popular leaders. Upon Lord Anglesea’s recall the modern “Whig model of statesmanship was set up and followed; popular grievances were allowed to remain, un re dressed; the discontent and violence engendered by those grievances were used from time to time for party purposes ; the people were hung and bayoneted when, their roused passions exceeded the due measure of factious requirement ; and the State patronage was employed to stimulate and to reward a staff of demagogues, by whom the masses were alternately excited to madness, and betrayed, according to the necessities of the English frictions. When Eussells and . s wore out or in danger, there were free promises of equal laws and privileges and franchises for oppressed Ireland; the minister expectant, or trembling for his place, spoke loudly of justice and compensation, of fraternity and freedom. To these key-notes the place-hunting demagogue pitched his brawling. His talk was of pike-making, and sword- fleshing, and monster inarching. The simple people were goaded into a madness, the end whereof was for them suspension of the Hdbean Corpus Act, the hulks, and the gallows ; for their stimulators, silk gowns, and commissioner- ships, and seats on the bench. Under this treatment the public mind became debauched ; the lower classes, forced to bear the charges of agitation, as welLas to suffer its penalties, lost all faith in their social future ; they saw not and looked not beyond the momentary excitement of a procession or a monster meeting. As time went on, those who led and robbed them felt the necessity of meeting the apathy attend ant upon their increasing demoralisation by the use of more pungent stimulants. They could no longer trust for topics of agitation to a recapitulation of real grievances which might be redressed, but in the removal of which would be involved the drying up of the springs of the agitators’
BE VIEW OF THE PAST. 131
influence. To hold out hopes of the establishment of civil and religious equality, of the attainment of complete freedom of industry, or even of local self-goveiiiment, no longer sufficed to rouse the passions of the mob, or to bring money into the exchequer of the demagogues. It therefore followed, that the staple talk of the popular meetings came to bo made up of appeals to the basest passions of the multitude ; old feuds between Irishmen were revived, a new appetite for vengeance was whcttod — nay, even the bonds of society were loosened by intimations, not obscure, that a triumph of the people would be associated with an abatement of the sacredness of property. The emptiness of this noise was in a direct ratio with its loudness. Yet it fulfilled its purpose of frightening the Tories out of office, or of deterring them
O CT> £>
from accepting it; and the talkers were accordingly every now and then rewarded and silenced by scraps from the refuse of official patronage. It must be obvious that this state of things could not have existed, had a middle class exercised a proper and natural influence upon the public mind. There was, however, practically, no such class in a position to interfere ; many of those who should have belonged to it were clamorous place-beggars, in the ranks of the agitators. Those who were not sunk into that abyss of degradation were restrained by their fears from taking any part in public affairs. They were, upon the one hand, afraid of contributing to a restoration of the power of their ancient oppressors ; and upon the other, distrustful of those ‘protended friends, whose selfish motives they could not but perceive through the disguise of their assumed patriotism.”*
The Irish peasantry very soon learned that whatever emancipation had done or might do for barristers and other persons qualified to hold situations under Government, from which. Roman Catholics had been previously almost entirely excluded, it had done nothing to remove or even to mitigate their practical grievances. They found that the rack-rents of their holdings were not reduced ; that the tax-collector went round as usual, and did not abate his demands ; that
* “ Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry,” chap, xviii., p. 45G.
K2
132 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the tithe-proctor did not fail in his visits, and that, in default of payment, he seized upon the cow or the pig, the pot or the blanket. Through the machinery of the Catholic Association, and the other associations which O’Connell had established, they became readers of newspapers, or regularly heard them read and had their contents expounded to them, and they learned what their own leaders had said in vehement, inflammatory language of their “monster griev ance,” the Established Church ; they learned that the language of their own leaders was not more A’iolent than what was uttered by the most eminent Protestant statesmen, foreign travellers, and public writers upon this great anomaly. They were told that “the 500,000 Lutherans in that island had an establishment which cost little less than the establishment of 9,000,000 of Lutherans in England ;” that while England had only twenty-six bishops, Ireland had twenty-two. They had heard of the picture presented by Mr. Wake- field, who thus addressed his readers : — “ Place yourselves in the situation of a half-famished cottier, surrounded by a wretched family, clamorous for food ; and judge what his feelings must be when he sees the tenth part of the produce of his potato garden exposed at harvest time to public ‘ cant ;’ or if, as is most common, he has given a promissory note for the payment of a certain sum of money to compen sate for such tithes when it becomes due, to hear the heart rending cries of his offspring, clinging round him, and lamenting for the milk of which they are deprived by the cows being driven to the pound to be sold to discharge the debt. I have seen the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling through wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of their only friend and benefactor at the pound-gate. I have heard, with emotions I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village as the cavalcade proceeded ; I have beheld at night houses in flames, and for a moment supposed myself in a country exposed to the ravages of war, and suffering from the incursions of an enemy. On the following morning the
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 183
most alarming accounts of Thrashers and Whiteboys have met my ears — of men who had assembled with weapons of destruction, for the purpose of compelling people to swear not to submit to the payment of tithes. I have been informed of these oppressed people having, in the ebullition of their rage, murdered both proctors and collectors, wreaking their vengeance with every mark of the most savage bar barity.”* They had been told by Mr. Wakefield — on the impartiality, accuracy, and general excellence of whose great work no eulogium can be too high — that the word “ Papist” carried as much contempt along with it, as if a beast were designated by the term ; that the Protestants regarded them as the helots of the country, who ought to be kept in per petual bondage. They were told of the experience of Lord Chancellor Redesdale, who stated in the House of Lords that he had been connected with that ill-fated country for the last twenty years ; and he was sorry to say that there existed in it two sorts of justice, the one for the rich and the other for the poor, and both equally ill-administered. They had read the following description of the tithe-proctor by their country’s most eminent Protestant statesman, Henry Grattan : — “ The use of the tithe-farmer is to get from the parishioners what the parson would be ashamed to demand, and so enable the parson to absent himself from his duty ; the powers of the tithe-farmer are summary laws and ecclesiastical courts ; his livelihood is extortion ; his rank in society is generally the lowest ; and his occupation is to pounce on the poor in the name of the Lord ! He is a species of wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock in his absence.” They had read that a single tithe- proctor had on one occasion processed 1,100 persons for tithes, nearly all of the lower order of farmers or peasants, the expense of each process being about eight shillings. They had heard of opinions delivered in Parliament, 011 the platform, and from the press by Protestant statesmen of the highest consideration, that it was a cruel oppression to extort in that manner from the majority of the tillers of the soil the tenth of its produce, in * Wakefield’s “ Account of Ireland,” vol. ii. p. 486.
134 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
order to support the clergy of another church, who, in many cases, had no flocks, or only a few followers, that were well able to pay for their own religious instruction. The system would Lo intolerable, even were the State clergy the pastors of the majority; Imfc as the proportion between the Protest ants and the Roman Catholics was in many parts as one to ten, and in some as one to twenty, the injustice necessarily involved in the niodo of levying the imp i was aggravated a hr- : ‘. It would ]>o scarcely possible to devise any
mode of levying an impost more exasperating, which Game home to the bosoms of men with more irritating, humiliating,
d which violated more recklessly
meu’s i If a pb;- were devised for
isurrection, nothing could u’ocfcor system. Besides, it
1 , . nshment of the country, re-
aiid limiting production. I the impost ;
: it, he was subjected to a tax often
, jrosa [)rodr,ce. Tlie valuation being made
by the tithe-proctor — a man whose interest it was to defraud both the tenant and the parson — the consequence was, that the gentry and the large farmers, to a great extent, evaded the tax, and left the small occupiers to bear nearly the whole burden. ; they even avoided mowing their meadows in some cases, because then they should pay tithe for the hay.
There was besides a tax called church cess, levied by Protestants in vestry meetings uiton ilc-maii Catholics for cleaning tiie church, ringing the bell, washing the minister’s surplice, purchasing ‘oread and wine for the communion, and paying the salary of the parish clerk. This tax was felt to be a direct and flagrant violation of the rights of conscience, and of the principles of the British Constitution ; and against it there was a determined opposition, which manifested itself in tumultuous and violent assemblages at the parish churches all over the country on , Easter Monday, when the rector or his curate, as chairman of the meeting,
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 135
came into angry collision with flocks who disowned him, and denounced him as a tyrant, a persecutor, and a robber. The evil of this state of things became so aggravated that all reasonable men on both sides felt it must be put a stop to somehow. In ] 831 the organized resistance to the collection, of tithes bocp.me so effective and so terrible; that they were not paid, except where a composition had been made, and agreements had been adopted. The terrified proctors gave up their dangerous occupation after some of their number had been, victimised in the most barbarous manner; and although a portion of the clergy insisted on their rights, not merely for the sake of their incomes, but for the interest of the Church which they felt bound to defend, yet many had too much Christian, spirit, too much regard for the interests of the gospel, to persist in the collection of tithes at such a fearful cost. Nothing could be more violent than the con trasts presented at this time in the social life of Ireland. On the one side, there was a rapid succession of atrocities and tragedies fearful to contemplate : — the bailiiis, consta bulary, and military driving a way cattle, sheep, pigs, and geese to be sold by public auction, to pay the minister who had no congregation to whom he could preach the gospel ; the cattle-prisons or “pounds “ surrounded by high walls, but uncovered, wet and dirty, crowded with all sorts of animals, cold and starved, and uttering doleful sounds ; the drivino- away of the animals in the nisflit from one farm to
O «/ «— ‘
another to avoid seizures ; the auctions without bidders, in the midst of groaning and jeering multitudes ; the slaughter of policemen, and in some instances of clergymen, with fiendish expressions of hatred and yells of triumph ; the mingling of fierce passions with the strongest natural affections ; the exultation in murder, as if it were a glorious deed of war ; the Roman Catholic press and platform almost justifying those deeds of outrage and blood ; the mass of the Roman Catholic population sustaining this insurrection against the law with their support, and sympathy, and prayers, as if it were a holy war in which the victims were martyrs. On the other side were presented pictures which excited the
136 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
deepest interest of the Protestant community throughout the United Kingdom. We beheld the clergyman and his family in the glebe house, lately the abode of plenty, comfort, and elegance, a model of domestic happiness and gentlemanly life ; but the income of the rector fell off, till he was bereft of nearly all his means. In order to procure the necessaries of life for his family, he was obliged to part with the cows that gave milk for his household ; the horse and car, which were necessary in the remote place where his glebe house was situated ; and everything that could be spared, till at length he was obliged to make his greatest sacritice; and to send his books — the dear and valued companions of his life — to Dublin to be sold by auction. His boys could no longer be respectably clad, his wife and daughters were obliged to part with their jewellery and all their superfluities. There was no longer wine or medicine, that the mother was accustomed to dispense kindly and liberally to the poor around her, in their sickness and sorrow, without distinction of creed. The glebe, which once presented an aspect of so much comfort, and ease, and affluence, now looked bare, and desolate, and void of life : but for the contributions of Christian friends at a distance, many of those once ha*ppy little centres of Christian civilization — those well-springs of consolation to the afflicted — those green spots in the moral desert — must have been abandoned to the overwhelming sand of desolation swept upon it by the hurricane of the anti-tithe agitation. During this desperate struggle, force was employed on several occasions with fatal effect. At Newtownbarry, in the county of Wexford, some cattle were impounded by a tithe-proctor. The peasantry assembled in large numbers to rescue them, when they came into collision with the yeomanry, who fired, killing twelve persons. It was market day, and a placard to the following effect had been posted upon the walls :— « There will be an end of church plunder ; your pot, blanket, and pig will not here after be sold by auction to support in luxury, idleness, and ease persons who endeavour to make it appear that it is essential to the peace and prosperity of the country and
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 137
your eternal salvation, while the most of yon are starving. Attend to an auction of your neighbours’ cattle.” At Carrickshock there was a fearful tragedy. A number of writs against defaulters were issued by the Court of Ex chequer, and entrusted to the care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong body of police, proceeded on their mission with secresy and dispatch. Bonfires along the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles soon con vinced them that the people were not unprepared for ‘their visiters. But the yeomanry pushed boldly on ; suddenly an immense assemblage of peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them. A terrible hand- to-hand struggle ensued, and in the course of a few moments eighteen of the police, including the commanding officer, were slaughtered. The remainder consulted safety and fled, marking the course of their retreat by the blood that trickled from their wounds. A coroner’s jury pronounced this deed of death as “ wilful murder “ against some persons unknown. A large government reward was offered, but it failed to produce a single conviction. At Castlepollard, in Westmeath, on the occasion of an attempted rescue, the chief constable was knocked down. The police fired, and nine or ten per sons were killed. One of the most lamentable of these conflicts occurred at Gurtroe, near Rathcormac, in the county of Cork. Archdeacon Ryder brought a number of the military to recover the tithes of a farm belonging to a widow named Ryan. The assembled people resisted, the military were ordered to fire, eight persons were killed and thirteen wounded ; and among the killed was the widow’s son.
These disorders appealed with irresistible force to the Government and the Legislature to put an end to a system fraught with so much evil, and threatening the utter dis ruption of society in Ireland. In the first place something must be done to meet the wants of the destitute clergy and their families. Accordingly, Mr.- Stanley brought in a bill in May, 1832, authorizing the Lord ^Lieutenant of Ireland, to advance £00,000 as a fund for the payment of the clergy,
138 IRELAND AI\r> HER CHURCHES.
who were unable to ^vilect their tithes for the year 1831. Tins meusiire was designed to moot the present necessity, and was only a preliminary to the promised settlement of the tithe question. It was therefore passed quickly through “both housi law on the 1st of June. But the
money thus advanced was not placed 011 the’ Consolidated Fund. TIi-1 G upo elf the collection of
the e si1. It was a maxim with
Mr. / I made to respect the
law; thiio lh i not be allowed to trample upon it
with impuni! . The odious thus assumed produced a
state of miparalleii-d . ‘he ] sople were driven.
to frenzy, insti by the Chief Secretary
mirig till ^ the army being em-
: ‘ . y knew that the king’s speech
recomim ie n>ho question.
They had he ishop Do;-, le and other
npions, exposing . . i -d to be the iniquity
of the tithe system. They he uidemnation of it
in the testimony of the Protestant Archbishop of DuHm, who declared hi- e;>e it coe.Ll nob bo collected
except at the ])oi;;.c of the bayonet, ruid by ]^eej)ing up a clironic war between the Government and the Roman Catholic people. They had been told that parliamentary committees had recommended the complete extinction of tithes, and their commutation, into a rent-charge. Their own leaders had everywhere resolved, ‘‘That it was a glaring wrong to compel tin impoverished Catholic people to support in pampered luxury the richest clergy in the world — a clergy from whom the Catholics do not experience even the return of common gratitude — a clevgy who, in times past, opposed to the last the political freedom of the Irish people, and at the present day are opposed to reform, and a liberal scheme of education for their countrymen. The ministers of the God of charity should not, by misapplication of all the tithes to their own private uses, thus deprive the poor of their patrimony ; nor should ministers of peace adhere with such desperate tenacity to a system fraught with dissension,
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 139
hatred, and ill-will.” The first proceeding of the Govern ment to recover the tithes under the Act of the 1st of Jim o was, therefore, the signal for general war. Bonfires Hazed upon the hills, the rallying sounds of horns were heard along the valleys, and the mustering tread of thousands upon the roads, hurrying to the scene of a seizure or an auction. It was a bloody campaign; there was considerable loss of life, and the Church and the Government, thus became more obnoxious to the people lan ever. Mr. Stanley being the commander-in-cluef on one side, and i-Ir. 0’’, loll on the other, the contest was embittered by choir personal anti pathies. It was found that the amount of the arre; s for the year 1831 was £10 i/ ‘‘5. and that the whole amount which the Government was able to levy, alter putting forth its strength in every possible way, was £!. ‘ t of
collection beb^g £l V’OO, ‘^-> that the Goverimiei.it was not able to raise as much, money as would pay the expenses of the campaign. This was how Mr. Stanley illustrated his favourite sentiment that the people should be made to respect the law. But the liberal party among the Protestants fully sympathized with the anti-tithe recusants.
Of course, the Government did not persevere in prosecu tions from which no parties but the lawyers reaped any advantage; consequently, all processes under the existing law were abandoned. It was found that, after paying to the clergy the arrears of 1<°’ and 183±, ana what would be due in 1833, about a million sterling would be required, and this sum was provided by an issue of exchequer bills. The reimbursement of the advance was to be effected by a land tax. Together with these temporary arrangements to meet the exigency of the case, for the payment of the clergy and the pacification of Ireland, an act was passed to render tithe composition in Ireland compulsory and permanent. But Ireland was not yet pacified, and at the opening of the session for 1833, the royal speech recommended that Parlia ment should take into their consideration measures for a final adjustment of tithes in Ireland. The Duke of- Wel lington took occasion to state in the debate on the address
140 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
that that most deserving class of men, the Irish clergy, were in as wretched a state as ever. And in the House of Com mons, Mr. Littleton, the new Chief Secretary who succeeded Mr. Stanley, deplored the failure of all legislative efforts to make the tithe system work well in Ireland. The Statute Book, he said, had been loaded with enactments by the legislatures of both countries, for the purpose of giving the proprietors of tithes effectual means to enforce the law. The whole of those enactments had proved ineffectual; many of them, of the most severe description, extending even to capital punishment, had proved utterly useless. The diffi culty of collecting tithes was, indeed, rendered quite insu perable by the minute subdivision of tilled land, which was alone liable. It was stated “that a return of the actual number of defaulters, whose debts were under a farthing, and rose by farthings up to a shilling, would exhibit a very large proportion of the gross number. In some instances the charge upon the land amounted to only seven-eighths of a farthing. When he informed the committee that many of the smaller sums were payable by three or four persons, some idea might be formed of the difficulty of collecting tithes in Ireland. The highest ao-m-co-ate charge was against
O oO O O O
those who owed individually about twopence ; and he would then beg to remind the committee that it was not so much the sum as the situation of the individual that rendered these charges oppressive. Twopence to one might be as great an impost as £2 to another. There was another great severity connected with the question of tithes. They were not simple. One proprietor alone did not come to the poor man to demand his tithes ; but many, whose interests were irreconcilable and adverse, fastened upon him. There were different kinds of tithes — the vicarial, rectorial, and impro- priate — all often fastening on the same individual, who was bound to meet the separate demands of each tithe-owner. The opposition to tithes, then, though it might receive an impulse from agitation, was not to be wholly traced to that source. There was a deeper source in the severity of the impost itself.”
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 141
It appeared from a parliamentary return* that, at the lowest calculation, the land belonging to the Irish sees was as follows : —
Sees. No. of Irish Acres.
Derry, 94,836
Armagh 63,470
Kilinorc, .
Dublin,
Meath, . . . ‘ -
Ossory, ......
>• Tuam, ......
Elphin, ......
Clogher,
Cork and Ross, . . .
Cashel,
Killaloe, ......
Tithes, ....
Ministers’ Money,
£565,300
The incomes of the parochial clergy in Ireland were subject to some deductions, as payments towards diocesan and parochial schools, repairs of certain parts of churches, arid repairs of glebe houses. Diocesan schools ought to be maintained by annual contributions from the bishop and the beneiiced clergy ; but the levy drawn from this source was little more than nominal. The parochial schools were sup posed to be maintained by an annual stipend from the in cumbent, which was estimated by custom at £2 per annum; in many cases this had not been paid. The first-fruits had been abolished. They were designed to be the amount of the first year’s income of every benefice, which was to be employed in. the building and repairing of churches and glebe houses, and the purchase of glebe land; but the assess ment was made on the value of benefices in the reierns of
o
Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James I., and yielded only a trifling sum.
It may be well to anticipate a little here, in order to state the result of a special Census of the Irish population which * February llth, 1824.
142 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
\
was taken m 18:34, with the, object of ascertaining the re ligious persuasions of the people, wlieii it was found that of 7; n •”>-[-, 7 GO was divided among the ; ons as follows: —
Proportion
per Cent.
Roman C; . - 6,436.030 . ‘ . SO’O
Es*abli*lie:l Church, . . 853,160 . . 107
Presbyterians, > . . 043,053 . . 8’4
Otl re, . . i>l,8S2 . . -2
In 3iidix to the first report of the Commissioners
of Pi , it was stated that of
ere 11 which did not
: 20 where there were less than or
>; m 2:> the number was under 10; in 31
:, the number
There were 425 benefices
low 1.00. There
t was non-resident,
id. The number of parishes or
\va - 2,408, and of this number 2;351
cure of souls; ln.it the total
•r of : as “i-Iy” 1,387, as before mentioned, of
whi:;” L’ishes, and 47.(> were unions of two
or more parishes, r ulyhes wore ‘permanently united by Act of Parliament, bv act of council, or by prescription, and they mK.;hl’ bo fe- united “by the authority of the bishop
Latterly, p :rpetual curates, a new order in the Irish l.’Siurch, had boc~:i «pi»ointeil to a portion of a parish specially the tithe of which they received,
and w--re >ject to the ii:eiiinbc:it of the remaining
&
port! fish, but held their situations for life.
Sueh was the state of things in Ireland when the Govern ment of Lord Grey undertook the work of Church reform. There was a groat deal of discussion in Parliament and throughout the country on what was termed “the Appro priation Clause,” which formed a part of the first bill intro duced on the subject. Dr. Doyle hud laboured hard to prove that tithes were originally designed, not only to support
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 143
the clergy, but to feed and educate the poor; and that there shoidd be for these objects a tripartite division of the Irish tithes. Many Protestants, who did not go that length, con tended that the income of the Irish clergy was excessive,
o«/
and. that the surplus should be devoted to the support of schools; but the great point of difference on which the Cabinet ultimately split was this: whether the property of the Church should be devoted to any other than strictly Church pur poses — whether any portion of the ecclesiastical revenues could be lawfully secularised. In. the first Church Tempo ralities Bill there was a clause affirming the principle that the surplus ought to be devoted to other purposes, to which Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Duke of llichmond, and others, strenuously objected, and it was withdrawn.
When Mr. Stanley was transferred from the orKce of Irish Chief Secretary to the Colonial Office, Sir John Cain Hob- house was appointed to succeed him. But he resigned the post before he had any opportunity of leaving his mark in Ireland. The office was then taken by Mr. Littleton, and on him devolved the task of introducing the Irish Tithe Adjust ment Bill. When the bill was in committee on the 30th of July, Mr. O’CoimeJl moved ;in amendment, to the effect that the tithes should be made p:v /able by the landlords to the clergy after being reduced -iO } :r cent. This amendment was carried — the numbers being, for the motion, 8^; against it, 33. The ministers determined, notwithstanding, to go on with the bill, and brought it up to the House of Lords. There, 011 the motion of Lord Ellenborough, it was thrown, out by a majority of 07 ; two archbishops and nineteen bishops voting against it, and only i^iree — Deny, Chichester, ; and Norwich — in its favour. The religious census of 1834 strengthened the party which favoured the appropriation of surplused Church revenues. Lord Althorpe, who was now one of the most influential members of the Government, and the leader of the House of Commons, in introducing the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, avowed his conviction that any surplus funds resulting from the State management of ecclesiastical revenues should be devoted to State purposes.
144 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
On the 27th of May Mr. Ward brought forward a motion upon this subject. In an able speech he reviewed the state of ‘Ireland, and remarked that, since 1819, it had been necessary to maintain there an army of 22,000 men, at a cost of a million sterling per annum, exclusive of a police force that cost £300,000 a year. All this enormous expense and trouble in governing Ireland he ascribed to the existence of a religious establishment hostile to the majority of the people; he therefore moved that “the Protestant Episcopal Establishment in Ireland exceeds the spiritual wants of the Protestant population ; and that, it being the right of the State to regulate the distribution of Church property in such a manner as Parliament may determine, it is the opinion of this House that the temporal possessions of the Church of Ireland, as now established by law, ought to be reduced:’
The motion was seconded by Mr. Grote. When he had concluded, Lord Althorpe rose and moved that the House should be adjourned until the 2nd of June. The differences in the Cabinet had now reached their crisis. It was fully expected that Mr. Ward’s motion would be carried, and ministers differed as to whether the principle involved in it should be rejected or accepted ; the majority were for accepting it, whereupon Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, Lord Ripon, and the Duke of Richmond resigned their offices. They were succeeded by Mr. Spring Ilice as Colonial Secretary; Lord Auckland, as First Lord of the Admiralty; the Earl of Carlisle, as Lord Privy Seal; Mr. Abercrombie, as Master of the Mint ; Mr. Poulet Thompson became Pre sident of the Board of Trade, and the Marquis of Conyngham, Postmaster-General. -
On the following day, which was the anniversary of the king’s birthday, the Irish prelates, headed by the Archbishop of Armagh, presented an address to Hi^Majesty, complaining of the attacks 011 the Irish Church, deprecating the threat ened innovations, and imploring his protection. The king was greatly moved by this appeal. Breaking through the usual restraints, he delivered an extemporaneous answer, in which among other things, he said :— “I now remember you
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 145
have a right to require of me to be resolute in defence of the Church.” He assured their lordships that their rights should be preserved unimpaired, and that if the inferior arrange ments of the Irish Church required any amendment — which, however, he greatly doubted — he hoped it would be left to the bishops to correct them, without the interference of other parties. He was now completing his sixty-ninth year, and he must prepare to leave the world with a conscience clear in regard to the maintenance of the Church. Tears ran down his cheeks while, in conclusion he said, “I have spoken more strongly than usual, because of the unhappy circumstances that have forced themselves upon the observa tion of all. The threats of those who are the enemies of the Church make it the more necessary for those wTho feel their duty to that Church to speak out. The words which you hear from me are, indeed, spoken by my mouth, but they now from my heart.”
These words, indiscreet as they were, and calculated to embarrass the ministers, were regarded as in the highest degree precious by the bishops and clergy, and the whole Tory party. With the utmost despatch they were circulated far and wide, with the design of bringing public feeling to bear against Mr. Ward’s motion. In the meantime, great efforts were made by the Government to be able to evade the motion. Its position at this time appeared far from enviable, and there was a general impression that it could not long survive. The new appointments did not give satisfaction. The Cabinet was said to be only patched up in order to wear through the session. Lord Grey — aged, worn, and out of spirits — was chagrined at not being able to’ have Lord Durham in” the Cabinet. Lord Althorpe was great in agriculture, and in his good-humoured - manner, he was accustomed to say that he wondered why people forced him to become a Cabinet minister. Lord Lansdowne had not energy enough, while the Lord Chancellor had per haps too much. On the whole, the Cabinet wanted unity and confidence in itself, and it was now made evident to all
146 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the world that it wanted the support of the Sovereign as well as of the House of Peers. It was under these discour aging circumstances that Lord Althorpe had to meet Mr. Ward’s motion on Monday, the 2nd of June. In order to avoid a dissolution and a general election, the results of which might turn upon the very existence of the Irish Church, it was necessary that the motion should be defeated. He refused to withdraw it, because he apprehended the speedy dissolution of the ministry, and he wished the deci sion of the House of Commons on the Irish Church question to be recorded, that it might stand in the way of a less liberal administration. The anticipated contest in the Com mons that evening excited extraordinary interest. The House was surrounded by a crowd anxious to obtain admit tance or to hear the result, while within it was so thronged with members that the ministers found it difficult to get to their seats. Rarely has there been so full a house, the number of members being 516. When Mr. Ward had spoken in favour of his motion, Lord Althorpe rose to reply. He announced that a special commission of inquiry had been already issued, composed of laymen, who were to visit every parish in Ireland, and were to report on the means of religious instruction for the people ; and that, pending this inquiry, he saw no necessity for the House being called upon to affirm the principle of Mr. Ward’s motion. He would, therefore, content himself by moving the previous question. This was carried by an overwhelming majority, the numbers being 396 to 120. The Church Temporalities Bill, with some alterations, passed the Lower House ; it encountered strong opposition in the Lords, but it ultimately passed on the 30th of July, by a majority of fifty-four, several peers having recorded their protests against it, among whom the Duke of Cumberland was conspicuous. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners appointed under the Act were the Lord Primate, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Lord Chancellor, and Chief Justice of Ireland, and four of the bishops. Subse quently three laymen were added.
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The following are the principal features of this great measure of Church reform.* Church cess was to be imme diately abolished. This was a direct pecuniary relief to the amount of about £80,000 per annum, which had been levied in the most vexatious manner; — a reduction of the number of archbishops and bishops prospectively, from four arch bishops and eighteen bishops to two archbishops and ten bishops ; the revenues of the suppressed sees to be appro priated to general Church purposes.
The archbishoprics of Cashel and Tuam were reduced to bishoprics, ten sees were abolished, the duties connected with them being transferred to other sees — Dromore to Down, Raphoe to Deny, Clogher to Armagh, Elphin to Kilmore. Killala to Tuam, Clonfert to Killaloe, Cork to Cloyne, “Water- ford to Cashel, Ferris to Ossory, Kildare to Dublin. The whole of Ireland was divided into two provinces by a line drawn from the north of Dublin county to the south of Galway bay, and the bishoprics were reduced to ten. The revenues ‘of the suppressed bishoprics, together with those of suspended dignities and benefices, and disappropriated tithes, were vested by the Church Temporalities Act in the Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to be applied by them to the erection and repairs of churches, to the providing for the church expenses which had been hitherto defrayed by vestry rates, and to other ecclesiastical purposes. The sales already made of perpetuities of Church estates, vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, have produced upwards of £631,353 ; thev value of the whole perpetuities, if sold, is estimated at £1,200,000. The total receipts of the Eccle siastical Commissioners in 1834 were £08,729 ; in 1835 they amounted to £168,027 ; and in 1836 they reached £181,045. The cost of the official establishment was at one time £15,000 ; during the last ten years it has been generally under £6,000. Its total receipts, up to July, 1861, were £3,310,999. The Church Temporalities Act imposed a tax on all benefices and dignities whose net annual value exceeds ,£300, graduated, according to their amount, from two * The Church Temporalities Act, 3 and 4 Wm. IV., c. 37.
L2
148 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and a-half to five per cent., the rate of charge increasing by 2s. $d. per cent, on every additional £10 above £405. All benefices exceeding £1,195 are taxed at the rate of fifteen per cent. The yearly tax imposed on all bishoprics is graduated as follows : — Where the yearly value shall not exceed £4,000, five per cent. ; not exceeding’ £0,000, seven per cent. ; not exceeding £8,000, ten per cent. ; and not exceedin^ £10,000, twelve per cent. In lien of tax, the archbishopric of Armagh is to pay to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners an annual sum of £4,500, and the see of Deny is to pay £G,1GO. The present net incomes of the Irish bishops are as follows : — Armagh, £14,034- ; Mcath, £3,764; Deny, £(j,022 ; Down, £3,058; Kiimore, £5,248 ; Tuam, £3,808 ; Dublin, £7,030 ; Ossory, £3,874 ; Cashel, £4,691 ; Cork, £2,310 ; Killaloe, £3,310 • Limerick, £3,987; —total, £63,038. The total amount of tithe-rentcharge payable to ecclesiastical persons — bishops, deans, chapters, incumbents of benefices, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners —is £401,114. The rental of Ireland is estimated, by the valuators under the Poor Law Act, at about £12,000,000 — this rental being about a third part of the estimated value of the annual produce of the land.*
Mr. Stanley left behind him one enduring monument of
his administration in Ireland which, though still a subject
of controversy and of party strife, has conferred immense
advantages upon the country — the National system of
education. Sir Archibald Alison remarks that the principle
of the Irish Establishment was that of a “ missionary
church ;” that it was never based on the principle of being
called for by the present wants of the population ; that what
it looked to was their future spiritual necessities. It was
founded on the same reasons which prompt the building of
churches in a densely peopled locality, the running of roads
through an uncultivated district, of drains through a desert
morass. “ The principle,” he adds, “ was philanthropic, and
often, in its application, wise ;” but it proceeded on one
postulate, which, unfortunately, was here wanting — viz.,
* “ Thorn’s Irish Almanac for 1863,” p. 721.
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that the people will embrace the faith intended for them. This was so far from having hitherto been the case, that the reverse was the fact. For nearly three centuries this experiment was tried with respect to the education of the rising generations of the Roman Catholics, and in. every age it was attended by failures the most marked and disastrous. The Commissioners of National Education refer to this uniformity of failure in their sixth report, in which they observe, — “ For nearly the Avhole of the last century the Government of Ireland laboured to promote Protestant ‘education, and tolerated no other. Large grants of public- money were voted for having children educated in the Protestant faith, while it was made a transportable offence in a Roman Catholic (and if the i>artv returned, hi<>‘h treason)
i *; O /
to net as a schoolmaster, or assistant to a schoolmaster, or even as a tutor in a private family. The Acts passed for this purpose continued in force from 1709 -to ‘1782. They were then repealed, but Parliament continued to vote money for the support of only the schools conducted on principles which were regarded by the great body of the Roman Catholics as exclusively Protestant until the present system was established.”
In the report drawn up by Mr. Wyse, the Chairman of the Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the foundation schools in Ireland, in 1837, an interesting history is published of the origin, progress, and workirio* of those obnoxious schools, and of other educa-
O
tional societies which followed. The Incorporated Society for Promo tin”1 English Protestant Schools in Ireland was
o o
established by royal charter in 1733, the avowed object being the education of the poor in the principles of the Established Church. It is sufficient to remark that the annual grants which were made to the schools in connexion with it (well known as the Charter Schools), were, in consequence of the report of the Commissioners of 1824, gradually reduced, and finally withdrawn. In 1824 there were of those schools 32 ; the number of children in them amounted to 2,255. The grant for 1825 was £21,615. The
150 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
grant was gradually reduced to £5,750 in 1832, when it was finally withdrawn. During nineteen years this system cost the country £1,012,138, of which £1,027,715 consisted of parliamentary grants. The total number of children appren ticed from the beginning till the end of 1824, was only 12,745 ; and of these but a small number received the portion of £5 each, allotted to those who served out their apprenticeship, and married Protestant*. The Association for Discountenancing Vice was incorporated in 1800. It required that the masters and mistresses in its schools should be of the Established Church ; that the Scriptures should be -read by all who had attained sufficient proficiency; and that no catechism be taught except that of the Established Church. Trie schools of the Association amounted in 1824 to 226, and the number of children to 12,709 ; of whom it- was stated that 7,803 were Protestants, and 4,804 were Roman Catholics ; but the Rev. William Lee, who had inspected 104 of these schools in 1819 and 1820, stated before the Commissioners of 1824, that he had found the catechism of the Church of Rome in many of them. The Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor was founded upon the 2nd of December, 1811, and was managed by a committee of various religious persuasions. The principles which they had prescribed to themselves for their conduct, were to promote the establishment and assist in the support of schools in which the appointment of governors and teachers, and the admission of scholars, should be unin fluenced by religious distinctions, and in which the Bible or Testament, without note or comment, should be read by all the scholars who had attained a suitable proficiency in reading, excluding catechisms and books of religious contro versy ; wishing it, at the same time, distinctly to be under stood, that the Bible or Testament should not be used as a school book from which children should be taught to spell or read. A grant was accordingly made to the society of £0,980, Irish currency, in the session of 1814-15. The system of this society was manifestly the same as that which was formerly called the Laucasterian system in
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 151
England, and which, although adopted by the great body of the Protestant Dissenters there, was so much opposed by the bishops and clergy of the Established Church in general, that they completely prevented its application to schools for children of their communion. The Roman Catholic prelates and clergy set themselves with equal resolution against it in Ireland, and with equal success. It was accordingly found in 1824, that of 400;348 children whose parents paid for their education in the general schools of the country, and whose religion was ascertained, there were 81,060 Pro testants, and 819,288 Roman Catholics ; while of 56,201 children educated under the Kildare Place Society — although theirs were schools for the poor, and the Roman Catholics bear a much greater proportion to Protestants . in the poorer classes than in the higher — there were 26,237 Protestants, and only 29,964 Roman Catholics.
Various inquiries had been instituted from time to time by Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees into the state of education in Ireland. One Commission, appointed in 1806, laboured for six years, and published fourteen reports. It included the Primates two bishops, the Provost of Trinity College, and Mr. R. Lovell Edgeworth. They recommended a system in which the children of all denomi nations should be educated together, without interfering with the peculiar tenets of any ; and that there should be a board of commissioners, with extensive powers, to carry out the plan. Subsequent commissions and committees adopted the same principle of united secular education, particularly a Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1824. These important reports prepared the way for Mr. Stanley’s plan, which he announced in the House of Com mons on the 9th of September, 1831. His speech on that occasion showed that he had thoroughly mastered the difficult question which he undertook to elucidate. It was remarkable for the clearness of its statements, the power of its arguments, and for the eloquence with which it enforced sound and comprehensive principles.
On the 20th of March Sir Henry Hardinge brought forward
152 IRELAND AND HER- CHURCHES.
the ministerial plan for the settlement of the tithe question. It was proposed that in future tithes should be recoverable only from, the head landlord, and that the owner should be entitled to recover only 75 per cent, of the amount, 25 per cent, beino1 allowed for the cost of collection, and the risk
O
and liability which the landlord assumed. He might redeem it, if he wished, at twenty years’ purchase, calculated upon the diminished rate. The purchase-money was to be invested in land or otherwise for the benefit of the rectors and other tithe-owners. The arrears of 1834 were to be paid out of the residue of the million advanced from the Consolidated Fund, and the repayments of the clergy for the loans they had received were to be remitted. There was a good deal of discussion- on this plan, Lord John Russell contending that it was the same in substance as the one brought forward last session by the late Government. There Avas, however, some difference between the two measures. In the former, the landlords were to get two-fifths, or £40, out of every £100, securing to the clergy 77i per cent., and involving an annual charge of 17J per cent, on the Consolidated Fund. This was the shape the measure had assumed as the result of amendments carried in committee. The ministerial reso lution was carried by a majority of 213 to 198.
But all this was but preliminary to the great battle which commenced on the 3()th of this month, and which decided the fate of the ministry. Lord John Russell, after the House had been called over, moved, “ That the House should resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider the temporalities of the Church of Ireland, with a view of applying any surplus of the revenues not required for the spiritual care of its members to the general education of all classes of the people, without distinction of religious per suasion.” This resolution was skilfully framed to secure the support of all the Liberal party, and of the English Dissenters as well as the Irish Catholics ; all of them being able to agree upon it, and to act together without inconsistency, though each might act from different motives and with different objects. The discussion was particularly interesting, as it
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 153
turned very much upon the. great question of religions establishments. Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Shell, while fully admitting that an establishment tends to promote religion and to preserve good order, contended that it ought not to be maintained where it fails to secure these objects, and that it must always fail when, as in Ireland, the members of the Established Church are only a minority of the nation, while the majority, constituting most of the poorer classes, are thrown upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy. Concurring with Paley in his viewr of a Church Establishment — that it should be founded upon utility, that it should communicate religiors knowledge to the masses of the people, that it should not be debased into a state engine or an instrument of political power — they demanded whether the Church of Ireland fulfilled .these essential conditions of an establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been employed in preserving arid extending the Protestant faith in Ireland ? In the course of something more than a century it was stated that its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now amounted to ,£8 00,0 00 a-year. Had its efficiency increased in the same proportion? Had it even succeeded in keeping its own small flocks within the fold ? On the contrary, they adduced statistics to show a lamentable falling off in their numbers. For example, Lord John Russell said, “ By Tighe’s History of Kilkenny, it appears that the number of Protestant families in 1731 was 1,055, but in 1800 they had been reduced to 941. The total number of Protestants at the former period was 5,238, while the population of the county, which in 1800 was 108,000, in 1731 was only 42,108 souls. From Stuart’s History of Armagh, we find that sixty years ago the Protestants in that country were as two to one ; now they are as one to three. In 1733 the Roman Catholics in Kerry were twelve to one Protestant, and now the former are much more numerous than even that proportion. In Tullamore, in 173J, there were 64 Protestants to 613 Roman Catholics ; but according to Mason’s parochial survey, in 1818 the Protestants had diminished to only five, while the Roman Catholics had
154 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
augmented to 2,455. On the whole, from the best computa tion lie had seen — and he believed it was not exaggerated one way or the other — the entire number of Protestants belonging to the Established Church in Ireland can hardly be stated higher than 750,000 ; and of those 400,000 are resident in the ecclesiastical province of Armagh.”
Such being the facts of the case, the Liberals came to the conclusion that a reform was inevitable. In order to adapt the Establishment to the requirements of the Protestant population, there must be a large reduction, and the surplus funds that remained ought to be applied to some object by which the moral and religious instruction of the people Avould be promoted. The least objectionable mode in which the money could be applied was the general education of the poor under the National Board, by which children of all denominations could be educated in harmony together, as they had been ever since its establishment. The reformers denied that there was any analogy between the revenues of the Established Church and private property. The Acts of Parliament securing those revenues had all treated them as being held in trust for the benefit of the nation; and after leaving ample means for the due execution of the trust, so far as it was really practicable, the legislature was competent to apply the balance in accomplishing by other agency than the Protestant clergy, to some extent at least, the objects originally contemplated by the founders of the religious endowments.
The case of the Irish Church was stated by Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and Sir James Graham, who argued that its revenues were greatly exaggerated, subjected to heavy drawbacks and deductions. The vestry cess had been abolished. A tax exclusively borne by the clergy of three to fifteen per cent, had been laid upon all livings, and the Church Temporalities Act. provided that in all parishes in which service had not been performed from 1830 to 1833, when a vacancy occurred, there should be 110 re-appointment, and the revenues of that living, after paying a curate, should be destined to other parishes differently situated, but for
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 155
purposes strictly Protestant. Here, then, is a provision already marie for the progressive diminution or extinction of the Episcopal Church in those districts where it is not called for, and can be of 110 utility. Whence, then, the anxiety to take away a surplus, which, in all probability, will not exceed £100,000 a year, from a Church already subjected to such heavy and exclusive burdens ? It is not pretended that the object of this appropriation is to apply the income seized to the payment of the national debt, or that it is justified by any State necessity. They argued that if the appropriation clause, as now shaped, once passed into law, not only would the Protestant faith cease to be the established religion in Ireland, but the measure would be fatal to the Established Church in England also. It was to avoid that danger that the Irish legislature at the Union had stipulated for the safety of the Protestant Church, and with out going the length of contending that those articles were like the laws’ of the Medes and Persians, which could not be altered, yet they should not be infringed upon without evident and pressing necessity ; and if there was any one Irish interest that should be treated with special tenderness, it was that of the Church, which, owing to the minority which constituted its adherence, was beset with peculiar dangers. Besides, it was asked, what chance was there that the concessions of this principle and the alienation of Church property would pacify the Roman Catholics, or heal the divisions of that unhappy country ? Would resistance to the payment of tithe to a Protestant Church be removed by applying a small fraction of its income to a different purpose ? Suppose the incumbents were removed from one-fourth of the parishes in Ireland, and their revenues applied to the National schools, would that alleviate the discontent in the remaining three-fourths, where the incumbents still resided and per formed their functions ? Would it not rather increase the agitation by encouraging the hope that by perseverance the Church would be stripped of all her revenues ? The measure, therefore, instead of bringing peace, would only stimulate strife and protract war, In fact, the Conservatives con-
156 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
tended that this was only the first of a series of measures avowedly intended to annihilate the Protestant Establish ment. What said Archbishop M’Hale in 1833, after four years’ enjoyment of the rights and privileges granted by the Emancipation Act ? He said, “ After all the evils which have fallen on this devote^, land, it is a consolation to reflect that the legislative axe is at last laid to the root of the Establishment. The primers of our ecclesiastical establish ments have not read the Roman history in vtiiii, when the two overshadowing plants which spread their narcotic poisonous influence all around them have been laid low. This is but the prelude of a further and still more enlarged process of extinction. By ‘every reform abuses will be re moved until, it is to be hoped, not a single vestige of that mighty nuisance will remain.” Mr. O’Connell was not less frank in his avowal of ulterior objects. In October, 1834, he said: — “It is (juke true that I demanded but a partial reduction. It was three-fifths of the tithes. Why did 1 ask no more ? Because I had lio chance, in the first instance, of getting the whole abolished; and I only gpt two-fifths, being less than I demanded. I had, therefore, no chance of getting the entire destroyed ; and, because I am one of those who are always willing to accept an instalment, however small, of the real National Debt — the people’s def)t — I de termined to go on, and look for the remainiler when the first instalment should be completely realized. My plan is to apply that fund in the various counties of Ireland, to relieve the occupiers of land from Graml Jury cess, and to defray the expense of hospitals, infirmaries, and -m^titutions for the sick.” In other words, said the Conservative^,- Mr. O’Connell proposed to confiscate the property of the Church, in order to relieve the land from its appropriate burdens, and to exempt it from the support of the poor. They argued, therefore, that on no reasonable ground could it be main tained that tin’s concession to Irish agitation could have any other effect than ^stimulating the agitators to make fresh demands. Sound policy required that the Protestant Estab lishment should be maintained in Ireland. It is the essence
REVIEW OF THE PAST. 157
of an establishment to be universal. There must be a clergy man in every parish. His provision must be certain beyond the reach of fraud or agitation, beyond the reach of popular influence, so that he may not be obliged to adapt the doctrine to the taste of his hearers, or to lower the standard of truth. It must be sufficient for the support of a family in decent competence, for the clergy are permitted to marry, and must not be socially inferior to the more respectable portion of their parishioners. The livings of Ireland were by no means above this standard, many of them were below it. For example, there were 570 under £250 a year, 85-1 under £450 a year, and 9-48 under £500 a year. The whole, Sir James Graham estimated, would not average more than £200 a year. “ It behoves the Whigs,” said lie, “ in a peculiar manner to oppose this mischievous and disastrous revo lution. Whig principles consist not in death’s heads and cross-bones, denunciations against those who venture to exercise their civic franchises according to their consciences, nor in prayers for mercy limited to those in heaven, but not to be extended to those on this side the grave. Genuine Whig principles consist in a warm attachment to civil free dom, and the Protestant religion as by law established. This is a vital question, upon which no further compromise can be, made. The property set apart by our ancestors to maintain e and propagate the Protestant religion is sacred, and ought only to be applied to sacred uses. More than this, those who minister at the altar ought to live by the altar. That principle is higlt as ‘heaven, and you cannot reach it ; it is strong as the Almighty, and you cannot overturn it ; it is as fast. as the eternal, and you cannot unfix it. It is binding 011 “a legislature consisting of Christian men, and acting on Christian principles, and no consideration on earth should induce you to compromise or destroy it/’ Sir Robert Peel, who argued all through upon the supposition that the concession of the appropriation principle involved the destruction of the Established Church, stated, that though he might be compelled to succumb to an adverse vote, he should ever condemn the procedure of procuring that vote
158 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
at the expense of the Irish Church, rather than by means of a direct motion of want of confidence in the Government. He believed that on this question the House was not an ex pression of national opinion ; he believed that his view was that of the large majority of the people; and he therefore felt strong to meet the decision that might ensue from his adherence to his view of duty to the Irish Church.
The debate lasted four nights, and was kept up with the greatest spirit and vigour. The division was taken between three and four o’clock in the morning, when it was found that in a house of Gil members the numbers were — for the motion, 322 ; against it, 289 ; leaving the Government in a minority of 33. A Cabinet Council was held on the following day, when it was unanimously resolved to await the result of the debate 011 the Irish tithe question on the same evening. Lord John Russell, 011 the report of the Committee being brought up, moved the following resolution : — “ That it is the opinion of this House that no measure upon the subject of tithes in Ireland can lead to a satisfactory and final ad justment which does not embody the principle contained in the foregoing resolution.” He referred to the principle of the appropriation clause. On this an animated debate fol lowed, which lasted till one o’clock in the morning. When the House divided, it was found that the resolution was carried by a majority of twenty-seven, the numbers being — ayes, 285 ; noes, 258.
As these divisions took place on a question of vital policy, Sir Robert Peel had no alternative but to resign. Accord ingly, he announced his decision in the House next day. After the extraordinary efforts that he had made, and con sidering the circumstances under which he was called upon to assume the reins of government, it must have been very painful to Mm to be thus cut short in his patriotic labours ; but he bore the disappointment with admirable spirit, and retired from his position so gracefully that he was warmly cheered from all parts of the House. In making his parting announcement, he said — “ The Government, being firmly re solved to adhere to the principle of their own bill, and not
EEVIEW OF THE PAST. 159
to adopt the principle of the vote of last night, felt it to be their duty as public men to lay their offices at the disposal of His Majesty. I have been anxious to make this explana tion as briefly as I can, and in a manner the least calculated to give offence, or excite angry feelings. My whole political life has been spent in the House of Commons ; and whatever may be the conflict of parties, I, for one, shall always wish, whether in a majority or a minority, to stand well with the House of Commons. Under no circumstances whatever, under the pressure of no difficulties, under the influence of no temptation, will I ever advise the Crown to forego that great source of moral influence which consists in a strict adherence to the spirit, the practice, and even the letter of the Constitution.”
It may be as well to dispose here of the Irish Church question ; for although Lord Morpeth, on the part of the Melbourne administration, brought in a bill for settling the question, which passed the House of Commons by a majority of twenty-six votes, and which contained the appropriation clause — in the House of Lords this clause was struck out, and it was otherwise altered in Committee so materially that, when sent back to the Commons, they scarcely knew their own offspring. The bill was therefore disowned, and thrown out.*
* The foregoing chapter is extracted from my History of England from the Accession of George IV. to the death of the Prince Consort, published some years ago. London : Cassell, Fetter, and Galpin.
PART SECOND.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS.
CHAPTER VIII.
MY report on the present condition of the Irish dioceses commences with the metropolis, which has always been the great centre of power and influence in the Irish establish ment.
Before I proceed to inquire into the condition of the several churches and parishes, it may be as well to make my readers acquainted with the authorities by whom it is governed, and the means set apart for the support of their dignity and the remuneration of their services. In order that the accuracy of these details may be beyond dispute, 1 have availed myself of returns carefully revised by the ecclesiastical authorities themselves, which may therefore be confidently relied upon as not overstating anything to the disadvantage of the Church. The diocese of Dublin and Glendalough contains 125 benefices with 88 curacies. The patronage in the Archbishop consists of, dignities and pre bends, 30; benefices, &c., 43; benefices to which he appoints alternately, occasionally, and conjointly, 5. The gross value of the see is £8,249 ; the probable, but not yet accurately ascertained, net value is £6,5G9. The present Archbishop is the Eight Hon. and Most Rev. Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D., second son of the late Richard Trench, brother of the first Lord Ashtown in the Irish Peerage, by Melesina Chenevix, granddaughter and heiress of Dr. Richard Chenevix, Bishop of Waterford from 1745 to 1779; born 9th September, 1807; married 1832, Hon. Frances Mary Trench,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 161
sister of Lord Ashtowii; educated at Trinity College, Cam bridge; formerly Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford; Hulsean Lecturer at Cambridge, 1845-6; Theolo gical Professor and Examiner, King’s College, London, 1847; Dean of Westminster, 1856; appointed Archbishop of Dub lin, 1863; consecrated 1st January, 1864; Primate of Ireland; Chancellor of the Order of St. Patrick ; Visitor of Trinity College, Dublin; patron of fifty-six livings. His Grace’s examining chaplains are the Yen. William Lee, D.D., Arch bishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity in the University of Dublin, and the Rev. J. G. Scott, A.M. ; his chaplain is the Kev. Arthur Dawson, A.M. It is said that the Archbishop appointed Dr. Lee on his arrival in Dublin, without any previous personal acquaintance, attracted to him, no doubt by his work on Inspiration, which has given him a high place in theological literature. The Archbishop is assisted by no less than seventeen rural deans, resident in different parts of the diocese, a surrogate, vicar-general, and registrars. The two cathedrals — Christ Church and St. Patrick’s — arc, in a certain sense, united. There is but one dean and ordinary between them, namely, Dr. West, appointed in ] 864 ; and there is a sort of duality in several of the minor offices, the same persons officiating in both churches. In Christ Church there is a precentor, a chancelloi’, a treasurer. There are three prebendaries, who are always the incumbents respectively of the parishes, St. Michael’s, St. Michan’s, and St. John’s. The vicars-choral are six in number. In addition to the vicars-choral, there are other singers called “ stipen diaries.” There is an organist, a deputy-organist, a “master of^he boys,” a master of the grammar school, and assistant- master, who is a clergyman. Then there is a registrar to the dean and chapter, a diocesan architect, a steward to the prebendaries and vicars, and a steward to the Augmentation Estate. In addition to these there is a pro-proctor, a law agent, and a verger. The total number of persons consti tuting the official staff of this cathedral is thirty, who all minister more or less directly to the dignity and efficiency of this single church, which accommodates about 1,000 per-
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162 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
sons, and is a heavy, dingy, ill-arranged, and uncomfortable place of worship, producing an impression that it is not accomplishing the purposes for which it was erected, except the singing, and presenting a sort of rnpnumeiital protest against the Reformation.
The collegiate and cathedral church of St. Patrick is still more amply supplied with dignitaries and officials, as appears from the following list: — Dean and Ordinary, Sub-Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, Treasurer, Archdeacon of Dublin, Archdeacon of Glendalough, Resident Preacher, Minor Canons, Vicars-Choral, Organist, Deputy-Organist and Mas ter of the Boys, Master of the Grammar School, Registrar to Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick’s, Steward to the Vicars, Verger and Pro-Proctor, Sexton.
Christ Church Cathedral has no property of its own, the clergymen belonging to it being supported by the incomes of certain parishes. But St. Patrick’s has a rent-charge of £1,434, which produces a net income of £1,112, there being church accommodation for 8,000 persons.
In his Primary Charge, the Archbishop gives the average number of persons attending public worship in the churches in the diocese of Dublin on the Sunday morning as amount ing to 40,000, and in the evening to over 19,000. This does not include the two cathedrals ; and in connection with this subject his Grace observes : — •
“It is gratifying to note how successful the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral has proved in that kind of success which its large-hearted and large-handed restorer must most have desired. I have before me the returns of the number of the week-day congregations, from June 12 to September 8 of the present year. These returns give an average attend ance of 148 a day, or 74 at each service — congregations, of course, somewhat swollen by the many sight-seers who have passed through the city during this summer, but satisfactory after every abatement has been made. Certainly our people, when opportunities of week-day worship are offered to them, are not slow to avail themselves of them.”
But the correspondent of the Clerical Journal, under-
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stood to be a rector of the Irish Church, gives the following description of the week-day service in that cathedral : —
“ A visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, upon a week day, is a gratification to every Churchman, and especially is delightful to those who in former days chanced to attend the old service. The change from decay, with its disagreeable accompaniments of sloth, filth, and carelessness, to renewal, with brightness, life, and energy, cannot fail to excite grati tude towards God, who moved the noble restorer to his munificent work. There is likewise felt a kind of jealousy lest this present beauty of God’s worship in this glorious cathedral should be marred prematurely by any negligence on the part of those who are specially bound to uphold and adorn the sanctity of the services. Upon a recent visit to this cathedral, upon the afternoon of a Church holiday, there were some indications of remissness and perfunctoriness among the clerical and lay officers of the cathedral which deserve remark. Of the ten or twelve clergymen whose duty it is to attend the daily service, there was one solitary representative, wlio is both a minor canon and a vicar-choral. Neither Dean nor Sub-dean was there, and the only other clergyman who attended was a prebendary. Only three singing men were present, in place of twelve vicars-choral. The surplices of the boys of the choir were untidy, and seemed as though their washing was paid for by the Eccle siastical Commissioners.”
It may be doubted whether the Protestants of Dublin are disposed to give any sort of reasonable attention to three cathedral services on week-days. All, except fashionable people and lovers of music, would prefer on such occasions a short, simple service, consisting of prayer and an extempo raneous exhortation. There is something peculiarly chilling to devotion in a cathedral service hurriedly performed in an immense cold building, with only a sprinkling of people present. The Archbishop states that the average attendance at St. Patrick’s since its opening was seventy on the week days, but remarks that the congregations were “ somewhat swollen by the many sight-seers who have passed through the
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164 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
city during the summer.” The fjict is, however, that even in the afternoon on week-days, the attendance is often riot more than a dozen, and at the morning service, ten o’clock, it is likely to be stiH less. The Dublin people are not early risers, noon is the Church hour to which they have always been accustomed ; and not even the most zealous ritualists among the clergy can coax many of them out to church two hour’s earlier. A mid-day or an afternoon service in St. Patrick’s might be fairly attended, especially ly ladies, if the cathedral were situated in a respectable quarter of the town, such as Merrion-square or Stepheii’s-greeii. But it stands in a locality which is one of the lowest in the city, surrounded by a dense, impoverished population, occupying decayed and half-ruinous houses, where nearly all sanitary arrangements are neglected, and the cathedral can be ap proached only by traversing a number of mean, dirty streets. Standing on the top of “Patrick’s steeple” — a noble tower, which Mr. Guinness has thoroughly renovated and strength ened with chiseled limestone, and which is 120 feet high, commanding extensive views on every side — the spectator looks down upon a mass of filthy lanes and alleys, squalid dwellings, pestilential slaughter-houses, and the lowest kind of shops for the sale of old furniture and refuse of all sorts which surround the cathedral, and cover all the space between it and Christ Church, about a quarter of a mile distant. It is said that Mr. Guinness has a plan in his mind for clearing off all those buildings and converting a large portion of what is called “Thf Liberty” into a People’s park, planted with trees, and affording the means of health and recreation to the inhabitants of that neglected part of the city. “ The formation of an extensive square, having one of our ancient cathedrals at each end, the Roman Catholic Chapel of St. Francis at one side, with St. Bride’s and St. Werburgh’s Churches on the other, and affording eligible frontages for building, could not fail to improve to a wonderful extent ‘the south side of the city, and is a grand idea, worthy of a merchant prince.”
Mr. Guinness, I need scarcely inform my readers, is the
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owner of the vast brewery establishment which bears his name, and the merits of which are appreciated, wherever there are Englishmen, all over the world. He is a man of boundless wealth, and his munificence is shown in many directions. The renovation of St. Patrick’s Cathedral — which was his own exclusive work, finished off, with every detail complete, in the course of three years — is said to have cost £1 20,000. There are those who think that, considering the unfavourable, though ancient and sacred locality, this money might have been otherwise expended with greater advantage, to the community — in such a way, for example, as the Peabody Fund in London. But if -jVIr. Guinness should carry out the magnificent scheme indicated above, he would lay the poor of Dublin under as great an obligation as he has laid upon the Church to which he belongs. The citizens, however, of all parties and denominations hastened to express their gratitude to this great public benefactor by returning him to Parliament without opposition, in the room of Sir Edward Grogan, who had resigned his seat. It was expected that the Queen would have been advised to confer upon him some title, at least a baronetcy, in recognition of one of the greatest services that ever a single layman ren dered to the Irish Church of which Her Majesty is the head. His son-in-law is the Hon. and Rev. AV. Conyngham Plunket, grandson of the great orator and statesman, who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and nephew to the late Lord Plunket, Bishop of Tiiam, whose title his father inherits. Mr. Plunket was* brought into the Chapter recently, and is now Treasurer of St. Patrick’s. Though comparatively a young man, he would, no doubt, have been appointed to the deanery had circumstances permitted. But that dignity, or probably one still higher, awaits him at no distant day, for he has in his favour influences powerful everywhere, but all-powerful in Ireland — nobility on the, one side and wealth 011 the other. These social advantages, with his own distinguished ability and energy, will be sure to raise him to one of the highest places in the Establishment, of which he is a zealous defender. The new Treasurer of St. Patrick’.s; in which office
166 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
he succeeded the Rev. Dr. Todd, T.C.D., received priest>.. orders in 1858, from which date to 1864 he was Rector of Kilmoylan, in the diocese ‘of Tuam, with an income of £320 a year, there being no church in the parish, and only four Protestant inhabitants. Mr. Plunket had, however, rendered impoi-tai.it service to the Church as chaplain to his uncle, and as the organizer and effective advocate of the West Connaught Church Endowment Society, which was established in 1859, and has been instrumental in endowing churches in six parochial districts in a part of the country where formerly great destitution existed.
In the lono*list of dignitaries mvcii above there are but two
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names distinguished by attainments in theological literature, and by their published works in defence or illustration of Christian truth. These are Dr. Todd and Archdeacon Lee; bat these gentlemen won their honours not in connexion with the cathedrals, but in connexion with the University, as Fellows and Professors. The present Dean was Arch deacon of Dublin, and examining chaplain to the late Archbishop Whately, having at the same time charge of the immense parish of St. Peter’s. It is often stated that the prizes in the Irish Church are very few ; if so, there is the more reason to discourage pluralities, and the monopoly of several prizes in the same hands, a course which would be dictated not only by a regard to the spiritual interests of the Church, but to its defence against external enemies. The
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net income of the Archdeacon of Dublin is o(?943, and the gross income =£1,855. What is called the “corps” of the archdeaconry consists of St. Peter’s parish, St. Kevin’s, St. Stephen’s, Trinity Church, Rathmines, St. Philip’s, Miltown, and Booterstown. This immense district has a total popula tion of 74,114. Setting aside five or six proprietary churches within its bounds, that is, churches supported by private endowments and pew rents, the corps of the archdeaconry affords church accommodation for 4,000 persons. We might suppose that the pastoral care of so large a population, coupled with the duties of archdeacon, was quite enough for one man, and that a minister of what is called “ a poor and struggling
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church,” with hundreds of ill-paid curates, might be content with an income of £1,000 a year. But Archdeacon Lee still retains his Professorship in Trinity College, which doubles his income ; and which in times like these, so critical, not only to our national Church, but to the Christian faith, might well give sufficient employment to the ablest and most industrious divine that ever the University produced. There are no giants in our days, but even in the days when there were giants, the duties which Archdeacon Lee has taken upon him would be quite burden enough for two pair of the strongest shoulders. Besides, it may be questioned whether a life devoted to the duties of a professorship in college be the best preparation for the position of a parochial minister; or that a divine immersed in parochial affairs, and even parochial disputes, caused by enforcing a too stringent ritualism upon reluctant congregations, is in the best possible condition to discuss with inquiring students the deep theo logical questions which are now silently agitating their minds. If our Church had an efficient government, capable of turning to the best account all the talents and resources at her command, we may be assured that there would be a better division of labour, and also a better division of emolument.
Before leaving the cathedral of St. Patrick’s, I feel bound in duty to say a few words with respect to the barrier which separates the nave from the choir and transepts, the part of the church which is fitted with pews, boarded, matted, and made comfortable for public worship. This barrier consists of a formidable iron railing, reticulated so as to obstruct the view, and surmounted by sharp iron spikes. The centre portion of this railing opens as a gate, to admit the clergy, the choir, and those who are privileged to occupy that reserved part of the house of God, which may be called the “sanctuary” of the Temple, while the nave is the “outer court.” It is true that there are seats in the nave to accomo- date the outer court worshippers, but owing to the barrier in question and the pillars or buttresses of enormous thick ness at each side, they can see little and hear less, while to persons who are not very hardy, sitting or standing for an
168 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
hour or two on a stone floor is decidedly dangerous to health. Of course, respectable people who make application to the proper quarters can obtain the privilege of admission by getting a written “ order.” But there is no public an nouncement informing the Protestant community where or on what terms the orders are to be obtained, or the grounds on which the separation is so rigidly established between the members of the same flock. Let us suppose strangers coming up from the provinces, or from the neighbouring counties, wishing to worship in this national temple and to enjoy its admirable choral service, or let us suppose visitors from Great Britain or America, attracted to the place from the same motives : they walk up towards the choir till they are stopped by the lofty iron gate. They see beyond the barrier a fashionable congregation, comfortably seated to the right and left of the choir, hearing and seeing everything to perfection ; and they may observe also a number of empty seats. But the gate does not open at their approach ; the janitor is blind to their presence ; ladies and gentlemen pass in, having either a “ face admission “ or presenting the magical order. If the strangers should attempt to follow, the gate is quickly shut in their faces, and they are told there is “ no admission without an order.” Now it must be confessed that this exclusion, during the hours of worship, has a very ugly, un-Christian appearance. It seems to be a presentation of Pharisaism in its most repulsive form, and to say to the publicans and sinners outside — “ Stand off, we are holier than you!” or, “Stand off, we are more respectable than you!” or, “Stand off, we are wealthier than, you!” The outer court worshippers, thus repulsed from the sacred enclosure of aristocratic Christians, may move round the huge buttresses and try to enter at the side ; but there the aisle is barred also by a small iron gate, carefully locked and guarded, and not to be opened except to the parties who have somehow secured the privilege of admission to the pews. Surely some means might be adopted to prevent overcrowding, less invidious, and more indicative of Chris tian fellowship, than the iron fortifications to which I have.
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referred. On the Continent, the magnificent cathedrals of the Roman Catholic Church are open to all the faithful on perfectly equal terms. The stranger can advance freely to the very steps of the altar and take any chair that happens to be vacant, paying a penny oi\two for its occupation. Whether it be from the nature of the Viceregal Court, with its crowd of ornamental officials and disniified siriecurists, or
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from the spirit of ascendancy and intolerance which from the Conquest down characterized the government of the Pale, the society of the Irish metropolis has always been peculiarly exclusive and snobbish, and the worst snobs are sometimes the purse-proud traders, who hang by the skills of the Court circle. It is to this inborn spirit of pretentious and anti-national “ascendancy” that we must ascribe, among other things, the determined efforts made to keep Stephen’s- green, one of the finest squares in Europe, shut against the people, despite the wishes of the noblest and most enlight ened part of the community to have it opened.
Notwithstanding the loss of the Parliament, and the con sequent absence of many of the nobility and landed gentry, the city of Dublin has made steady progress, and has been largely increased and very much improved since the Union. It is true that the maomifiecrit town residences of some of
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the nobility have been turned to very different uses. For example, Leinster House, the palace of Ireland’s only Duke, is occupied by the Royal Dublin Society ; Tyrone House, by the National Board of Education ; Powerscourt House, by the firm of Ferrier, Pollock, and Company ; and Alborough House, by Her Majesty’s troops ; while several others are hotels, or have even been so degraded as to be let off in separate tenements to room-keepers, who seldom appreciate the value of the lofty marble chimney-pieces or the elaborate ornamentation of the ceiling. But against all this we have to set off whole squares and innumerable “roads” to the south side of the city, erected during the present century, and occupied by the landed gentry, by wealthy members of the learned professions, and by a very numerous class of merchants who have realized splendid fortunes. Kingstown
170 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
also, which may be regarded as belonging in a certain sense to the city of Dublin, has become a considerable town, the intermediate territory for six or seven miles along the coast being studded with handsome villas, while a very large suburban population, generally in good circumstances, has grown up in the same district, in which there are two other townships, Blackrock and Pembroke. Taking the first year of the present century — the epoch of the Union — as our starting-point, we shall find that the Irish metropolis, amidst all the vicissitudes of the country, has been steadily improving. The total population of Dublin at that time was 182,370 ; now it is 254,293, the increase having been constant at every decennial period since the Census began to be taken. There is no doubt that the property of the city has increased in proportion.
It is gratifying to be able to state that the progress of the Church, and the development of its resources, have kept pace with the progress of society, and show a wonderful advancement during the last half century. But it has hap pened in the old parts of Dublin, as it has happened in the old parts of London, that the community has outgrown the ancient parochial system, and that a number of well-endowed churches clustered in a small space have been forsaken by nearly all the wealthier portion of the parishioners, who reside in the country, where they have built and endowed churches for themselves. The ancient city walls, of which no traces now remain, included the parishes of St. Werburgh, St. John, St. Michael, St. Nicholas Within, the eastern part of St. Audeon, and the Deanery of Christ Church — a space comprehending about forty-five English acres. Taking Christ Church as a central point, we find within about half a mile of that build ing no less than twelve parish churches, some of them not many perches asunder ; viz., St. Werburgh’s, St. John’s, St. Michael’s, St. Nicholas Within, St. Peter’s, St. Andrew’s, St. Ann’s, St. Audeon’s, St. Brigid’s, St. Catherine’s, St. J ames’s, St. Luke’s — nearly two-thirds of the parishes of the metro polis, which are only nineteen in number. Within the same space are the two cathedrals and the Castle Chapel, which is
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attended regularly by the Viceregal Court, the Chief Secre tary, and all the State functionaries, with their families, who belong to the Established Church. The Royal Chapel has been lately so much improved that it is now an architectural gem in its internal fittings and decorations.
St. Werburgh’s, however, is the parish church of the Lord Lieutenant, in which he has a seat in front of the organ ; and, by established etiquette, he attends the annual charity sermon for the schools. This church, originally a fine building, almost hid by a number of mean houses which enclose it, was dedicated to the patron saint of Chester. It was formerly a sort of cathedral. Among its incumbents were the celebrated Jam •;.--•. Usshor, afterwards Archbishop ; William Chnppol, John ..niton’s tutor at Cambridge ; Arch bishop King, and other celebrities. It became the burial- place of many important Irish families, including the Geraldines. The LOT: Jo of Lord Edward Fitzgerald is an object of interest to the admirers of the chivalrous character of that unfortunate patriot. The church was twice destroyed by fire. The steeple was 1GO feet high, terminating with a gilt ball and vane, forming one of the chief ornaments of Dublin ; but being found in a dangerous condition, it was taken down in 1810. The tower also was taken down in 1836, and the bells were unhung and placed in the vestibule. The building has, consequently, a mutilated appearance. In 1630 this church was described as “in good repair and decency,” worth £60 per annum, there being 239 house holders in the parish, all Protestants, with the exception of 28 Roman Catholics. At the close of last century its total population consisted of 3,629. By the last census (1861) the population was returned at 3,174 persons, of whom only 692 are members of the Established Church. The net income is £396, the present incumbent being the Rev. Edward W. Whately, son of the late Archbishop. For many years the attendance in this fine parish church has been very small, consisting mainly of poor people, and not averaging more than about fifty persons.
One minute’s walk from St. Werburgh’s, and divided from
172 IRELAND AND HETl CHURCHES.
Christ Church Cathedral only by a narrow lane, is the parish church of St. John’s, a small, plain, oblong building, with a stone front, in the Grecian style. It is surrounded by galleries, and has seats for GOO people. It has a small belfry, and it is almost amusing on Sunday morning to hear its tiny bell ringing an accompaniment with the magnificent gong of Christ Church swinging in the lofty tower by which it is overshadowed. The whole area of the parish is under fourteen English acres. The population at the close of last century was 4,14-, inhabiting 295 houses. At present it is 3,0-43, of which -41(5 are members of the Established Church. It is a prebendal parish, and the living is in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church. The net income is £220 per annum. The church is one of very ancient foun dation. It received various endowments from time to time, intended of course for Roman Catholic purposes. It fell into decay in the middle of the last century, when the Irish Parliament granted a sum of £1,000 for the erection of the present edifice.
Passing along Christchurch-place, to the west of the cathedral, we meet the parish church of St. Michael’s, sepa rated only by a narrow street. This church is remarkably diminutive, all tmver at one end, and all window at the other. The window, which faces the cathedral, consists of stained glass, and the tower is a dark, heavy, square struc ture, which seems not at all in keeping with the little buildino- with li^ht-coloured walls with which it is connected.
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It has accommodation for about 200 persons, the total Pro testant population of the parish being seventy-six, so that if every man, woman, and child, including the aged and the sick, belonging to the Established Church, were seated in the little building, it would not be more than one-eighth filled.
Proceeding westward in the same line of streets, we arrive, in four or five minutes, at the parish church of St. Audoen’s —a very ancient structure, but so small that it would not be noticed, except for the square tower, designed for a much larger building. Shut out of view from the main street,
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this church is visible only from a narrow lane, and abuts upon the large Roman Catholic church of St. Audoen’s. In ternally it is very nicely fitted up, with the pews, or rather seats, arranged in the modern style, and affording accommo dation for about 300 persons. Attached to it are schools and a widows’ almshouse. The net value of the living is £156 a year, and it is in the gift of the Archbishop.
Proceeding, still in. the same line, along High-street, in less than five minutes we come to the fine parish church of St. Catherine’s ; and in less than five minutes more we arrive at the parish church of St. James’s — a beautiful modern structure.
Passing by these churches for the present, we return to the group of old parishes surrounding Christ Church Cathe dral. The subjoined table presents at one view the anoma lous state of things connected with these parishes. The census of 1361 gives the numbers of the religious denomina tions in the several parishes, but it was not without an immensity of labour and care that the results could be collected. To find the Protestant inhabitants of some of the smallest of the parishes it was necessary to hunt through several municipal wards. In order to ascertain the number of the respective denominations in the enormous parish of St. Peter’s, I had to search through no less than six muni cipal wards and two baronies iu the county Dublin, and to bring together a number of details in order to make out the totals, which the Census Commissioners have supplied for each parish.
Extent. Total Population. Church
Acres. In 1800. ‘ In 1866. Population.
St. Werburgh’s, 16 2,6-29 3,174 -692
St. John’s, 14 4,142 3,043 416
St. Michael’s, 5 2,599 1,169 76
St. Audoen’s, 33 5, 1 92 4,302 420
St. Bride’s, 37 8,009 10,919 1,892
St. Nicholas Within, 5 1,121 1,838 184
Taking six of those parishes — namely, Werburgh’s, St. John’s, St. Audeon’s, St. Bride’s, St. Nicholas Within, and St. Michael’s, we find that they occupy only an area of 111
174 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
English acres, and that their aggregate Church of England population is 3,680 persons of all ages. It has been calcu lated that, excluding young children, the aged, and the sick, about half the total population may be expected to attend public worship. The number of people, therefore, in these six parishes requiring church accommodation, is not more, at the utmost, than 2,000. The net income of the six parishes is £1,283, which would give 12s. a head for all the persons in those parishes able to attend public worship. Each of these small churches is served by two clergymen, some of them by three. Counting the curates’ salaries and the charitable endowments, the total amount of Church revenue spent upon them is very large.
Let us contrast these six parishes with the single parish of St. Peter’s, the parish churili of which, an. old ugly build n >_<:•-, sending in a graveyard, is now being renovated. This church is situated in A <.”. gier-strect, about half a mile from the group of prebendal churches which we have been considering. The parish contains 4,103 acres, that is, it is nearly forty times as large as the whole of the six parishes above enumerated! The population of those parishes has not changed very materially since the beginning of the present century. In some there is an increase, and in some a diminution. The diminution has been caused by the fact that all the people who have business places in those old, crowded, unhealthy districts manage to reside out of town, in order to enjoy the benefit of good air for their families. This is in a great measure the cause of the larger decrease of the Protestant population, who have become a small minority in some instances where in the last century they were a majority, because they belonged for the most part to the wealthier class of society. By professional men, for this reason, this district is almost entirely deserted, so that even the parochial clergy are generally non-resident. It has been quite different with the parish of St. Peter’s. At the close of the last century the population was 16,000, now it is upwards of 58,000 — that is, it has increased five-fold in sixty years. Of this number 14,000 belong to the Established
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Church, so that the Protestants are to the Komaii Catholics in the proportion of about one to four. The parish stretches out beyond the city bounds into the barony of Dublin 011 the one hand, and the barony of Uppercross 011 the other, extending to Rathfarnham on the right, and to Donny brook on the left. It is in the rural portion of it chiefly that the great increase of population has taken place.
We may pause here to ask, Can there be a more striking illustration of the absurdity of sticking to the old parochial system, of the gross anomalies of that system, and of the utter waste of resources which it necessitates ? There are half a dozen religious establishments, each with its church, its schools, and, perhaps, its almhouses, its two or three clergymen, its churchwardens, sexton, organist, parish clerk, schoolmaster, £c., the whole of these ministering to some 3,000 or 4,000 souls, the miserable residuum of the popula tion, within a territory of about one hundred English acres. This is one picture. In the other picture we behold a parish forty times the extent of those six parishes, with four or five times the Church population, stretching across the city boundary and out into the country south, east, and west for miles — and all this vast territory and population committed to the pastoral care of a rector, who is also Archdeacon of Dublin, and Professor of Divinity in the Dublin University. How is it possible to defend such a parochial system as this ? Can it be defended by any friend of the Church who desires that her revenues should be beneficially applied, that her resources should be turned to the best account for the spiritual advantage of her people, and that her ecclesiastical arrangements should commend themselves to the public as Reasonable and just, instead of outraging the feelings of pro priety and equity in every Christian mind ? If the instruction, guidance, and consolation of the members of the Church alone were the object, and if there were a real government of the Church conducted on principles of common sense and justice, would not these six diminutive parishes — relics of a state of things that has passed away for ever — be all united into one parish, of which Christ’s Church, St. Werburgh’s,
176 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
or St. Catherine’s, would be the parish church, in order that the Church property, all the parish endowments — which have long ceased to answer their purposes — should, following the Protestant population, be transferred to the districts where they are required, and where the ministrations of half a score clergymen — now all but wasted— might be turned to the best account in the work of Church extension and in the edification of the Protestant people.
In those remarks 1 have spoken with exclusive reference to the Protestant population. If we were to take into consideration the total population that should be embraced in the theory of the parochial system, which some people contend for as apostolical and inviolable, although Ireland owes it to the Anglo-Norman settlers, and it dates only from the twelfth century — then, indeed, the failure of the system to supply the wants of the whole people would be astounding. For example, the total population of the six parishes in the foregoing table is 24,445 ; so that the Estab lishment even in this poor locality, where its forces are so powerfully concentrated in the space of about 100 acres of territory, has left 20,000 Roman Catholics destitute of the means of grace, and, according to the solemn ordination vows of its own clergy, and the emphatic testimony of its own Thirty-nine Articles, blinded by a system of “ damnable
1 ry-”
But leaving out this aspect of the parochial system, and confining our observations for the present to the Anglican Church community itself, we find a still more startling anomaly staring us in the face, and upbraiding us with the irrationality and inconsistency of our ecclesiastical system. However we may attempt to account for it, it is a strange fact that the Protestants of Ireland do not adhere to their parish churches. On the contrary, they are forsaken, as a rule, by all who are able to pay for pews or sittings in the free or proprietary churches, or what we may call the voluntary Episcopal churches. For accommodation in them they generally pay at a high rate — seldom less than a pound a year for each sitting, although they could have their
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 177
ancestral pews without cost in their own parish churches. Whether it be owing to the system of patronage under which the ministers are appointed, or to some other cause, certain it is that in the great majority of cases the parish churches of Dublin have been miserably attended. The congregation thinly scattered through the church presents an aspect the reverse of cheering 011 the Sabbath morning, with languor in the reading-desk, tameness in the pulpit, and drowsiness in the pews. On the other hand, all the churches which are extra -parochial are well attended, some of the largest of them being crowded ; and they have been so continuously for many years, irrespective of change of ministers. It will suffice for the present to mention one instance of this. Not ten minutes1 walk from the group of old parish churches which I have described, stands the chapel of the Molyneux Asylum for the Blind, in which the late Dr. Floury maintained a high popu larity for many years. Anew asylum and a splendid church were erected a few years ago in Leeson-park, about a mile out of town at the south side. That large church was im mediately crowded by a most respectable congregation, and did not cease to be so when Dr. Fleury died, and was suc ceeded by his assistant, the present popular chaplain. It occurred to some Christian men that the old building might still be turned to account as “ a missionary church.” Such an institution seemed to be scarcely required in the imme diate vicinity of Peter’s parish church, and Werburgh’s parish church, and the other churches I have named, not to speak of the two cathedrals. Yet so successful has the undertaking become, that I have seen in this single church, now Albert Chapel, nearly as many worshippers as in the six well-endowed, ably served parish churches, to which reference has so often been made. These are facts — unde niable facts.
178 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
CHAPTER IX.
SHAMS have prevailed, more or less, in all ages, and the progress of modern civilization does not seem to have greatly diminished their number or their variety. Of all shams, ecclesiastical shams are the most reprehensible and disgrace ful. If, in the conduct of Divine worship, “ all things should be done decently and in order” — if Christians, and, above all, Christian ministers, should so act as to give no offence and to cast no stumbling-block in the way of the people, — if truthfulness, sincerity, uprightness, be Christian virtues, the Church herself, in her corporate capacity, ought to present a perfect example of honesty in her dealings. Her rulers ought to be faithful stewards of the property intrusted to their management. As much as in them lies, they ought to turn those sacred funds to the best possible account for the promotion of religion and charity. If they had not legal power to do this, they should have sought that power through their representatives in Parliament. So far as the Irish branch of the Church is concerned, they cannot complain of the want of means to do this. They have special repre sentatives in the members for the Dublin University. These might always count on the support of a large and compact body of Conservative members, strong Churchmen. Besides, a number of the Irish bishops have seats in Parlia ment, and there is no doubt that their lordships have influence enough to bring about any practical reform necessary for the greater efficiency of the Church. Indeed, there is an Act of Parliament by which the Lord Lieutenant in Council can make new parochial unions, and parishes may be suspended, under certain circumstances, where there is no church or congregation, the revenues of which may be employed in other directions by the Ecclesiastical Commis sioners, who exist for the very purpose of applying Church
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 179
property when going to waste to districts and objects where it is most required. With such a state of facts, there ought to be no gross and glaring abuses — no ecclesiastical Gattons and Old Sarums, even in remote parts of the country, still less in the heart of the city of Dublin, and within a few minutes’ walk of the Archbishop’s palace.
How, then, shall we account for the scandal of St. Nicholas Within — a sham parish of five acres, adjoining Christ Church Cathedral, with only a street between ? The history of this church is curious. It was erected by Donagh, Bishop of Dublin, founder of the Convent of the Holy Trinity ; and, in 14.<79, Edward IV. granted a patent to Lord Worcester and his wife, Sir John Bath, John Clievir, Thomas Birming ham, Stephen Botiller, or Butler, and John West, to found a chantry of one or two chaplains in honour of Cod and the Virgin Mary, to celebrate mass in this church for the benefit of the souls of the founders, and for those of all the faithful departed, with endowments of lands, tenements, and rents, &c. A small chapel was consequently dedicated to the Virgin Maiy, 26 feet by 17. In 1030, a report stated that the church and chancel were in good repair and decency, the most of the parishioners being Papists. When Dr. Samuel Winter, Provost of Trinity College, preached in St. Nicholas Church, his lectures were frequented by the commissioners, city magistrates, and many others ; and to encourage poor people to come to church, he caused some white loaves to be distributed among them al .ways when the sermon was ended. Dr. Samuel Mather, the celebrated Presbyterian divine, was Dr. Winter’s co-pastor. Towards the close of the seventeenth century, Dr. King remarked that it had the thinnest congregation in Dublin till Mr. Price became its rector ; but that, since he became its incumbent, though he had erected two galleries, there was still a want of room for the crowds that attended, owing to his care, piety, and diligence. The church was rebuilt in the year 1707, the front being of hewn stone, with a great arched doorcase in the centre, upon which, in the first storey, was a large arched window, with a smaller arched window
N 2
180 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
at each side. In the second storey was another arched window, over which was a square belfry, rising about twelve feet above the roof. The chapel of St. Mary in the new church extended in the front of the Lord Mayor’s seat, and in breadth to the middle of the church, and a gate in the western wall is still called the priest’s gate. Nothing remains of either the church or the chapel now but the bare walls, the doors and windows being roughly filled up with stones. The building having become ruinous, it was unroofed in 1835 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who got the vaults covered over with large nags, and in that state it remains to this day, a melancholy monument of something worse than neglect.
There is located upon the five acres which this unique parish contains, a total population of 1,838, of which 184 persons belong to the Established Church, that is, about one to eighteen. These might easilv be absorbed in the little
o ~ J
congregations attending the half-dozen churches already described within a stone’s throw of the ruins, and, as a, matter of fact, they are absorbed somewhere, all but a few paupers. Yet in “ Thorn’s Almanac “ I find that St. Nicholas Within has an incumbent, with a net income of £110 a year, which is understood to be considerably under the real value. He resides far away at the north side of the city, Avhere he could not easily be found by his parishioners, if there were any to seek his spiritual care. He also fills the office of Chaplain to the Mountjoy Government Prison, where he has a little duty to perform. As incumbent of the roofless church of St. Nicholas Within, he keeps a curate, who lives in Rathmincs. It required no small amount of ingenuity to put any sort of decent face upon this sinecure, but the thing has been attempted. If any one curious in these matters tries to find the parish of St. Nicholas Within upon a Sunday at noon, he will, after diligent inquiry, be directed to a small house adjoining the ruins of the church. He ascends a very narrow staircase, till he comes to the garret, and there he sees two little rooms thrown into one, with forms to seat twenty-five or thirty persons. Beside the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 181
open stairs there is a box, serving as pulpit and reading- desk, and immediately under it a small table for the elements of the Holy Communion. Beside the pulpit is an old easy chair for -# the clerk, a comfortable-looking gentleman in plaid slippers, who seerns from his manner to be fully sensible of the comicality of the situation, and to enjoy it thoroughly. When the service has proceeded for some time, an elderly gentleman, sprucely dressed in black, with high shirt-collar and deep black stock, without a trace of whiskers on his long red face, and with all the remaining locks of his hair economically and scrupulously arranged, makes his appearance, and takes a prominent place on a chair. He soon solves the mystery of a piece of furniture having the appearance of an old wardrobe standing near the pulpit, and which proves to be an organ — like the organist just described, a venerable relic of the past — said to be a portion of an old Dutch instrument. Soon after him a young man, like a respectable mechanic, comes in and proves to be the organ-blower. We have now got the curate who officiates, the parish clerk, the organist, and the organ-blower ; in addition, there are two young men and two or three old women, looking very like parish paupers or pensioners. These make up the whole of the congregation, with the exception of eight girls brought from the Protestant Refor matory School, situated a considerable distance off. These girls seemed to be under the charge of a fat old gentleman and his wife, who would be at first taken for the only householders or bond ji.de parishioners in the room. But although the day was fine when I visited the place, there was literally not an individual present to whom that description could apply. Officials, paupers, prisoners arid their keepers, numbering altogether not more than twenty persons, constituted the congregation, for which two clergy men do duty in a garret — as mean as any room I have ever seen used by Methodist or Dissenting home missionaries for village prayer-meetings. The present Archbishop of Dublin and his Archdeacon, hearing the fame of this singular church, dropped in one day to see it, and one can easily understand
182 IRELAND AND HKR CHURCHES.
how shocking to their refined ecclesiastical taste, and to their feelings as High Churchmen, must have appeared this shabby exhibition of the Establishment. We may imagine their reflections as they thought of districts of tho country where there are Proto.^tants without churches, and Protestant ministers without stipends and wondering what sort of love the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick’s could have had ibr the ( ey exercised their mtronage in such a
manner as to allov, this “livii is in their gift, to
],!• abused in • ibed. We can understand the
AreYi.i.-uioy) n . l>e compatible with
L O 1
Christian tru1 ond ‘‘ Deputation Secretaries “
on beo-.-’iiif’1 i Lid to raise fin^L: lor the
O C”‘ O
/ of sinecures in
tlio heart ofl citi 01 ui vitli able mi i Listers bound
bo tli ‘< lies solely by a golden chain,
having no business . cl no reason whatever to be
•, except to (|ualiiy bin nselves ibr receiving their
iids. In fact, it is not ;\ cure of soids, but a legal way
of receiving incomes under false pretenc;- •;.
But the strangest part of the story of St. Nicholas Within is yet to be told. The Chapel of bhe Virgin Mary, with an endowment of about £.300 a year, is involved in the ruin of the church. It was impossible since the Reformation that any of those who received the income could have performed the duties for which the endowment was given, namely, to celebrate mass daily for the souls of the donors, and for the “ faithful departed “ generally. Yet the endowment has been enjoyed by Protestant clergymen down to the present time. In the year 181-0 it was the subject of an extraor dinary trial in the Court of Queen’s Bench, Dublin. The chaplaincy having become vac.int, there were two candidates for it, the Rev. Mr. Shannon and the Rev. Tresham Gregg. According to law, the householders of the parish have the right of electing the chaplain. Mr. Shannon contended that the right of voting belonged to the Roman Catholic house holders as well as the Protestants. They voted, and gave him a majority ; but the Court of Queen’s Bench decided
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 183
that they had no right to vote, and that the revenue, at all events, had become Protestant, and could not be devoted to “ superstitious uses,” or be disposed of by those who still held the faith of the donors in that parish. There are only four resident voters, and half a dozen altogether, resident and non-resident, who have any legal claim to vote. Yet in all probability there will be another trial at the next vacancy.
It is quite evident that the £500 or £600 wasted on this sham paiish should have long ago been turned to account in the real .service of the Church, while the few families it contains should be handed over to some neighbouring parish. It has no church, 110 schools, no widows’ house, no institution whatever connected with it. There is only one service in the whole week, conducted in the garret above described, and yet there is a complete staff of church officers, viz., a clerk, a sexton, an organist, and an organ-blower, who receive for their services handsome stipends from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Oil what principle that body feels itself justified in paying those stipends is a question which ought to be asked in the House of Commons. The Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick’s have but a few small livings in their gift, namely, this parish, St. Nicholas Without, and St. Luke’s, which have been lately united, and the perpetual curacy of St. Bridgid’s. The union of St. Nicholas Without with St. Luke’s has been effected chiefly, it is said, through the instrumentality of Mr. Guinness, M.P., the former parish having had no church for many years. This shows that the Dean and Chapter have the power of effecting reforms if so disposed, and that there is a possibility of other patrons correcting abuses in a similar manner when men are really in earnest. The church of St. Bride’s, or St. Bridget, would have a very small congregation without the soldiers who attend it, and the schools, which are excellent. It is remarkable that this is the only church in Dublin the schools of which are connected with the National Board. Although extremely High Church, the incumbents of St. Bride’s have been distinguished by great liberality in politics. The present
184r IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Dean Berrningham, who was curate of the church for many years, voted for O’Connell, and the present incumbent, the Rev. W. G. Carroll, is almost the only one of the Dublin Established clergy who has acted openly and cordially with the priests in working charitable institutions.
It must strike any one looking at Church matters with an impartial eye that it is a great absurdity to have two cathe drals in Dublin, both situated quite near one another in the oldest part of the city, where there is only a miserable residuum of the Protestant population, caring little or nothing about cathedral worship. A Church reformer of the very mildest class would recommend that Christ Church should be reduced to the condition of a parish church, the centre of a union consisting of St. Michael’s, St. John’s, St. Werburgh’s, St. Nicholas Within, and St. Audoen’s, which would give a Church population of about 8,000 persons, and furnish a con gregation 011 Sunday morning of about 1,000, which is less than Christ Church could easily accommodate. This reform would involve the abolition of the Chapter, or its complete incorporation with St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The patronage of the union thus formed for Christ Church might be given to the Archbishop, who has at present only four Dublin parishes in his exclusive gift — St. Ann’s, St. Peter’s, St. Wer burgh’s, and St. Audoen’s. The present corporation of Christ Church does not deserve much credit for the Avay in which it has exercised its patronage. An example of this has been given in the recent election to St. Michael’s, when they gave the living to a clergyman of only eight years’ standing in Dublin, undistinguished by his talents or services, and passed by other candidates, one a distinguished scholar and author, the Rev. J. Jordan, a Dublin curate of nearly twenty years’ standing, and another curate of many years’ standing — the Rev. R. Flemyng.
There are excellent schools connected with this parish, in consequence partly of a good parish estate, from which the salaries of the teachers and of a curate are paid ; and also, no doubt, in consequence of the great care bestowed on them by the late prebendary, the Rev. William Greene, son of the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 185
late Baron Greene, and now prebendary of St. John’s, which, like its neighbour, St. Nicholas, in the “ top room” over the way, has a miserable congregation, because there are so few Protestants in the neighbourhood. For many years past there have been no churchwardens in St. Michael’s, and last year there could be none appointed in St. Nicholas Within for the same cause, that is, the want of Protestant house holders. But of all the examples of the want of regard to real and valuable service to the Church, it seems to me that the most striking is that of the present rector of St. Audoen’s, one of the small prebendal churches already described. The Rev. Dr. Leeper has been nearly thirty years a working clergyman in Dublin. He has the reputation of being a good linguist, as well as a medallist of the Dublin University ; he is a literary man of superior attainments, and so highly has he been esteemed as a parish clergyman, that lie was presented with his degree of B.D. by his old parishioners of St. Mary’s, and of D.I), by the teachers under the Church Education Society of Ireland. Yet the only promotion he has ever got in the Church is this little parish of St. Audoen’s, with an income of about £150 a year. What renders the neglect of such a man by the dispensers of Church patronage more reprehensible is that Dr. Leeper has been for many years, and is still, the highly efficient chaplain and secretary of the Church Education Society; so that his merits and services were well known to the majority of the Irish prelates, who preside over that institution, and yet not one of them has ever given promotion to their most deserving officer. How shall we account for this ? Was he neglected because he had a large family depending upon him for support ? How dif ferent would it have been if he were a younger son of some noble or wealthy family, with no children at all and but a a tithe of his capacity for public service. Archbishop Whately, though strongly opposed to the Church Education Society, by giving Dr. Leeper St. Audoen’s, has really done more for him than any of his Church Education friends.
It is due to Archdeacon Lee to say that though he had spent his life in college he has proved himself to be a most
186 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
energetic pastor. He seems to be one of those earnest, prac tical men, who cannot rest satisfied with abuses before their eyes, which it is within their province and power to reform. If he has a strong proclivity to ritualism, it is only a proof of the logical consistency of his creed. Believing in the Book of Common Prayer as the best liturgical expression of Scriptural truth, he is determined as far as he can to carry his principles thoroughly out, and to put life into its forms. Even tho.se of his parishioners who so vehemently blame him for unduly exalting the Prayer-book, are obliged to admit that he also exalts the pulpit by the ability of his- i treadling One of the thiii”^ that strike a thoughtful
I ‘ O
ob -server with most asi in connexion with Church
is intters in Dublin, is the abortive character of the parish churches. The cl :’ the architect, which was always
utterly devoid of emy never to have been carried out
so far as the steeple was concerned. A i>orch was erected, i\T\(\ a place left for a steeple, but the vacancy remained till the church grew old, and the bare barn-like gable, Sabbath after Sabbath, from generation to generation, reproached the congregation, the rector, the archbishop, and the Govern ment, for their want of zeal, or even common interest, in the welfare of the Church. This fact is most remarkable in St. Ann’s, the parish church of the archbishop, which, even at the present day, presents this unfinished appearance. St. Peter’s, the mother church of a vast and wealthy parish, was one of those parochial monuments of neglect, apathy, and bad taste. But no sooner did Archdeacon Lee become the rector than he determined to remove this reproach. He set to work energetically for the restoration of the building, started a subscription for the purpose, and, it is said, has already collected nearly all the necessary funds. The esti mated cost of the partial rebuilding is £5,000, to be slightly reduced by leaving out some ornamental work if funds fall short. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners have granted £1,900 ; from the “ Beresford Fund” there is a grant of £100 ; so that the sum to be subscribed by the parishioners is only £3,000. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners are very
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 187
anxious to have the church completely rebuilt, which would cost £1,400 additional, of which the}1- would advance £1,000, leaving only £400 to be subscribed. If rebuilt, the western wall would be carried about fifteen feet further to improve the shape of the church. The building has been closed, and no doubt the work of reconstruction will be carried forward with all convenient speed. In the meantime Divine worship is held in the parish school-house. If, then, all the time and powers of the rector were concentrated on this large and influential parish of St. Peter’s, great results might be expected ; but with his duties as member of the Chapters of the iwo cathedrals, ax Archbishop King’s Lec turer in Divinity in the Dublin University, and as Examining Chaplain to the Archbishop, it is not in human nature that he could possibly be an efficient parish minister, or bestow upon his rlock the personal attention and care which, accord ing to his own church, theory, the office of a parish priest involves. It would not be difficult indeed to do as well as most of his predecessors, for there are respectable families who had been attending that same parish church regularly for five, ten, or twelve years without ever receiving a pas toral visit at their homes, unless the curates were specially sent for in case of dangerous illness. Strange as it may appear, this has been hitherto the ordinary state of things in the parishes of Dublin, with rare exceptions.
St. Stephen’s Church, a handsome building, situated near Merrion-square and Pembroke Township — the most aristo cratic district of Dublin — is attended by the wealthiest of the city congregations; and especially by those who are sup posed to have high Anglican tendencies. It is a chapel of ease or district church in the parish of St. Peter’s. The Rev. F. Woodward, at present chaplain of the Anglican Church in the city of Rome, and the Rev. William Maturin, now Incumbent of Grangegorman Church, Dublin, were both chaplains in St. Stephen’s many years ago, and established its reputation, fixing in it a very fashionable congregation. Its character has been well maintained by its present curates, the Rev. Messrs. Smith and Walsh, both able men j
188 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the former has published a volume of sermons, and the latter obtained a theological scholarship in the University. There is a daily service here, which is fairly attended, and OH Sunday mornings the church, which accommodates 850. is always full.
In ancient times the government of Dublin was a miniature representation of the Government of Ireland generally, with its numerous chiefs, each rejoicing in his independent juris diction, and his power over life and property in his own little domain. The city of Dublin also was divided into little principalities, called “Liberties.’ The Archbishop of Dublin had his 1.’ in which he could erect \vliat has
been described as a sure sign of civilization, namely, the gallows, and use it too. The Prior of Kilmainham had his Liberty, and so also had the Dean of St. Patrick’s — all rejoicing in their exemption from the jurisdiction of the Mayor of Dublin.
But “/A/.- Liberty” which has survived to the present day belonged to the Earl of Meath. and comprised a con siderable portion of the western part of the city at the south side of the Lifiey. An ancestor of this peer. Sir \YilHam Brabazon. held the ofHce of Vice-Treasurer and General Re ceiver of Ireland from L”>o4- to L”>.”)2. He was three times at the head of the Government as Lord Justice, and of course availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded to get possession of so large a portion of Dublin. The Earl of Meath’s Liberty has always been noted as the lowest and most impoverished part of the city. It is considered bad enough now. but it is a paradise to what it was half a cen tury ago. It consisted for the most part of very narrow streets, lanes, and alleys, occupied by artisans, petty shop keepers, labourers, beggars, and a numerous class that lived by vice. Whitelaw, in his History of Dublin, states that from ten to sixteen persons of all ages, and both sexes, slept in a room not fifteen feet square, “ stretched on a wad of filthy straw, swarming with vermin, and without any covering save the wretched rags that constituted their wearing ap parel.” From thirty to fifty individuals were frequently
INSPECTION* OF BISHOPRICS. 180
found in one house. In Plunket-street, in 170S, thirty-two contiguous houses contained 917 inhabitants, and the entire Liberty averaged from twelve to sixteen persons to each house. There was at that time an utter neglect of sanitary arrangements — an evil which has not been cured yet. Filth accumulated outside the houses till it was nearly on a level with the windows of the first tloor, producing smells that to visitors were intolerable. In bark lanes and narrow yards matters were still worse, while the nuisances of slaughter houses, knackers’ yards, soap factories, \-c., poisoned the air on every side. In Thomas-street, the great thoroughfare to the west, there were, in 170S, 100 houses, of which fifty-two were licensed to vend raw spirits, and were, kept open all night — scenes of drunkenness, rioting, and all sorts of vice. When the stranger remarks upon the poverty and squalor of the Liberty at the present time, he is told, perhaps, by his Irish friends, that it is all to be ascribed to the Union; but if he goes back to the history of ante-Union times, even when the Liberty was the scat of the silk trade, he will find that it was then ten times more wretched than it is at present.
This is a sort of population for which the Established Church ought to have made provision on a scale propor tionate to the extent of the population and its demoralized condition. It is chiefly situated in the parish of St. Catherine, which at the close of the last century was in habited bv 20,000 people. At present the population is about the same, but only 1,.”>0.”> belong to the Establishment. For these there is ample accommodation in the parish church, which is conveniently situated — a line building with sittings for 000 persons. The net value of the living is £300 a year. We are not surprised to find that it is in the gift of the Earl of Meath, nor do we question the general belief that, in the manner and form provided by law, the next presentation is sold to the highest bidder, and that there is therefore little regard paid to the intellectual or moral fitness of the rector, who claims to be the sole legitimate pastor of the 20,000 souls within the bounds of his parish. The late rector became
190 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the subject of a trial which contained very imedifying dis closures, and it could not have been, expected that under his pastoral care much could have been done for the spiritual good of the people. Nothing can be said against the moral character of the present incumbent. But turning to the “ Irish Church Directory,” published by Mr. Charles, I find something vei ‘kable in the dates connected with the
appointment. Ho was ordained in 1S:~9, at which time he entered the diocese, and in the very next year he was in ducted a« the rector of this parish. He suddenly abandoned another honourable profession, the Bar, for the purpose of enter previous training, therefore, could
not have specially fitted him for the discharge of his duties as tlie pastor of ;’ .;;ry church in the midst of a poor,
ignor ition. It is true that he is assisted by
two currd not himself very well qualified
lor his *•>‘.’•’;<• •, lie is not like! -vith abilities
calculate! 1 to eclipse him. The men of his choice will be faint reflections of himself, and even if they have superior light, they will fin;! :.’ bo keep it shaded. This may
account for the melancholy fact that while the total popula tion of this parish within the eitv bounds is 18,000, and the Church of England population is 1,595, and there is accom modation in the church for 900, yet the actual attendance upon the ministry of’ these three clergymen at Sunday morning service might be contained in a schoolroom of moderate dimensions. This parish has the best estate in the city, amounting to nearly £1,000 a year, managed by a board incorporated by a recent Act of Parliament, at the instance of Mr. Benjamin Lee Guinness, M.P. Part of the stipends of the two curates is paid out of this fund. The church at Harold’s-cross, and another in Swift’s-alley, off Francis-street, are chapels-of-ease to St. Catherine’s, though each has ics own district assigned to it, and each minister has the position of an incumbent.
Among the charges brought against the late rector, who had exchanged an English living for this parish, was one of mismanagement, in connexion with the proceeds of the great
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 191
parish estate. To avoid his creditors he lived in the vestry- room of the church. At one time, when the Rev. Mr. Hast ings was rector, and the Rev. Thomas Gregg curate — two excellent ministers — there was a great revival of religion in
e c> ~
this parish, and the church was full ; but since that time it has been rapidly sinking in popularity and public estimation. This result has been brought about partly by interminable parisli squabbles connected with pecuniary matters. A Presbyterian congregation in the neighbourhood is said to have been largely recruited from time to time by desertions from St. Catherine’s; whereas if its pulpit were efficiently occupied by an Evangelical minister capable of preaching extemporaneously, the contrary effect would be produced ; the Dissenters would frequent the church as they have done to a large extent in this city.
St. James’s parish, is next to St. Catherine’s, and though it
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also is in the gift of the Earl of Meath, it lias boon much more favoured by Providence. So long ago as the year 182G the living came into the possession, by purchase of course, of an excellent Evangelical clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Kingston. It is a vicarage with a reiitcharge of £331, the net income being £222 ; but Mr. Kingston is not dependent upon this income. He is said to be one of the wealthiest of the Dublin clergy. By his instrumentality and exertions a new parish church lias been built, and it is a model of what a parish church should be, beautiful and commodious, all the internal arrangements being calculated to inspire the cheerful feeling expressed in the words of the Psalmist : — “ I was glad when they said vmto me, let us go into the House of the Lord.” The church population of the parish is 1,872, the total population being 18,495. The Protestant paupers are so numerous in the South Union, which is situated in this parish, that one of the curates is almost exclusively employed in attending to them. The new district of St. Jude’s, near Kilmainham, where a good church has been recently built, and is well filled, has been formed out of part of St. James’s parish, not only with the consent, but with the active co-operation of Mr. Kingston, though at a yearly
192 IRELAND AXD HER CHURCHES.
pecuniary loss to himself. If all incumbents were like him, the Establishment would be in a very different position to day. Still the fact remains that a good parish minister, after labouring for forty years, finds only one in eighteen of the population adhering to his church.
The parish of St. Andrew’s embraces the commercial centre of the city — College-green, Dame-street, Grafton- street, Suffolk-street, Westmoreland-street, &c., the church being situated near the University and the Bank of Ireland. At the beginning of this century, the total population was 7/500; at present it is 0,900, of which 1,572 are members of the Established Church, 4,971 being Roman Catholics and 303 of other denominations. The parish may be regarded as in an especial manner belonging to the State. The patrons are the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Lord Chief Justice, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and the Master of the Rolls. The Chiefs, who are Roman Catholics, decline to exercise their rights. The late vicar, the Rev. Mr. Bourne, was a pluralist of nmny years’ stand ing, holding a parish in the country. He was an octogen arian when he died, a few years ago, and was seldom seen or heard of, so that the rising generation of his parishioners had almost forgotten his existence. The senior curate for forty or fifty years, a quiet, estimable man, was the Rev. Mr. Nevins. After him the pulpit was occupied, and the church well filled, by a very popular preacher, the Rev. Charles Tisdall, now Dr. Tisdall, Chancellor of Christ Church and Rector of St. Doulough’s, in the county of Dublin. The gross income of the parish is £G74, and the net income <£427. When the last vacancy occurred there were many candidates for this desirable post. If the congregation had had a voice in the matter, they would no doubt have chosen some able, accomplished minister, whose eloquence would have filled the pews.
The church remained in ruins since January, 1800, the parishioners, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and the patrons not being able to make up their minds as to the character of the building to be erected — whether it should
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 193
be an unpretending structure, suitable for the very small congregation of resident parishioners, or whether it should be a magnificent edifice, worthy of its situation, and an ornament to the city. The latter idea was ultimately adopted. The design unanimously approved of is that of the firm of Messrs. Lanyon and Lynn, of Belfast ; the esti mated cost of which is £10,500, to which may be added £400 for railing and stonework in front of the church, £500 for organ, £100 for bells, contingencies £1,000, ornamental work £700, architect’s fees, £000.
According to the latter plan, which admits of ornamental additions at any future time, the building has been com pleted, and was opened for public worship by the Archbishop on St. Andrew’s day. It is a really beautiful edifice, far too grand for the parish, unless it be regarded as a sort of metro politan church, to which strangers visiting Dublin and unattached worshippers might be attracted, in which case a Church Spurgeoii located there, or even a man of far inferior povrer, with a gift of extemporaneous preaching, would be instrumental in doing much good in promoting vital Chris tianity. Something like this would be done in such a case by the Presbyterians, or by a Roman Catholic bishop, who knows the importance of adapting means to ends, and with whom the Great end is not that the post would suit the man,
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but that the man should suit the post — not that a certain amount of property should be enjoyed by a clerical friend, but that the greatest amount of good should be done to the people, and consequently to the influence of the Church. Archdeacon Wolsoly is a wise and good man, but he belongs to the high and dry school of preachers, who have less chance of a hearing in Dublin perhaps than in any place in the United Kingdom. Consequently, unless the venerable vicar of St. Andrew’s be magnanimous enough to employ eloquent men as curates, and to allow them to preach regularly, there is much reason for apprehending that this fine building, the erection of which has drawn so largely on the general funds of the Establishment, will be but an addition to the long list of metropolitan parish churches which have so sadly
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194 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
failed to answer the object of their existence. There is at present a minister in the Irish Church by whose preaching St. Andrew’s would be sure to be filled to overflowing. I allude to Dr. Magee, grandson of the late Archbishop of that name. He is unquestionably the most accomplished preacher that the Establishment could boast of for many years. His is not the declamatory style of pulpit eloquence which puffs up columns of wordy climaxes, like an engine letting off the stoam, or flings around masses of rhetorical froth. His oratory indeed is sparkling and spirited, but it has always a strong body of thought. -While stirring the feelings with the fervid power of a true master of eloquence, his matter is solid, logically arranged, and instructive, his diction appro priate and correct. If, then, the Irish Church had a govern ment capable, of turning all its intellectual and moral re sources to the bust account. Dr. Magee, who is comparatively useless as Dean of Cork, would be placed in the liu-ivopolitan pulpit of St. Andrew’s, and where, like Dr. Gregg, in Trinity Church, he should have nothing to do but preach. The crowded state of this church at the second opening service, and the effect produced by the Dean’s sermon, fully bear out these remarks.
St. Anne’s, as I have already remarked, is the parish church of the Archbishop, whose palace is in Stephen’s-green, North. The parish includes some of the most respectable parts of the city, such as Stephen’s-green, North, Dawson-street, Kildare-street, Leinster-street, Clare-street, Merrioii- street, and part of Grafton -street. The total population, according to the last census, is 1(),91.(), which is about 4,000 more than it was sixty-eight years ago. Nearly 2,000 of these belong to the Established Church, 8,727 are Roman Catholics, and the remainder Dissenters of different denominations. The gross value of the living is £512 a year, and the net value £300. The church, which has been rendered much more commodious by the abolition of the old square pews, accom modates 1,000 people, and it is well filled by a highly respectable congregation — much better filled than any of the parish churches in this city.
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The admirers of the many great qualities, intellectual and moral, of the late Archbishop Whately had to lament some weaknesses in his character. Logic was his forte, and he had an extreme fondness for dialectics. He was never so happy as when surrounded by those of his clergy who appreciated, or pretended to appreciate, most highly and admiringly the displays of his powerful and subtle intellect in this department. The consequence was that he saw and heard too much through the eyes and ears of those favoured friends, and that he had too little respect for excellent ministers of another stamp, who formed no part of this intellectual clique. There was, therefore, a strong impression, not altogether unfounded, that Dr. Whately, though in the ordinary sense of the word remarkably unselfish, was partial and unjust in the exercise of his patronage. He had his pets among the clergy, while others of much higher standing and longer service were totally neglected, and perhaps dis liked. Where the Archbishop took a liking, he was a thorough-going friend, and it must be admitted that those who enjoyed his friendship were generally distinguished by real moral worth. One of the most worthy of his favour ites was Dr. Dickinson, who had been his chaplain, and who, through his influence, became Bishop of Meath. Bishop Dickinson died prematurely. His son, the Rev. H. Dickinson, was appointed, when very young, to the parish of St. Anne’s, of which the Archbishop is patron, and two of his brothers got livings in the diocese. His brother-in-law, the present Dean of St. Patrick’s, became Dr. Whately’s examining chaplain and Archdeacon of Dublin, and got the great parish of St. Peter’s, and its appendages, chiefly from regard to the deceased Bishop of Meath. Facts like these, quite as much as differences on the education question, perhaps, accounted for the general dissatisfaction felt by the evangelical clergy, who are the great majority, with respect to Archbishop Wliately’s administration of the diocese. The present vicar of St. Anne’s is a superior preacher, as well as a most diligent and successful parish minister, which is proved by the flourishing state of his congregation, and his attention to
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196 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the parochial schools. On the death of the Rev. E. S. Abbott, rector of St. Mary’s, Mr. Dickinson was appointed in his place as Snb-Deaii of the Castle Chapel.
The parish of St. Mark’s is one of the most important in Dublin. It contains a population of 20,887, of which 3,784 belong to the Established Church, and upwards of 10,000 to the Church of Home. The living is a vicarage, the gross income of which is .£44:), and the net income £303. The patrons are the same as those of St. Andrew’s, namely, the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop, the three chief judges, and the Master of the Rolls. The church is a substantial, capacious building in Great Brunswick-street, standing in a grave-yard still unclosed, much below the level of the road, and it affords accommodation for 1,300 people. It is attended largely by the working classes and small traders, that is, largely in proportion to the other classes ; but like most of the other parish churches it, has a thin, listless congregation. The lifeless aspect which it presents is easily accounted for. The parish has been in an unsatisfactory condition for many years. The vicar resides at Kingstown.1 His name is seldom heard amongst the Dublin clergv, though he has enjoyed the benefice since 1831. The parishioners complain that he spends generally from four to six months of every year in England ; and when at home, he seldom appears in the church or parish, except at noon service on Sundays; and he is “assisted” for the most part by curates, who are young and inexperienced. While one maybe a very zealous ritualist, magnifying the Church and the Prayer-book ex travagantly, the other may be pulling in an. opposite direction as a minister of the Evangelical school. The clergyman, who should perform the functions of a head, is supposed to dislike the people, though he has been connected with them in the endearing relation of pastor for more than thirty years. The parishioners apparently reciprocate the feeling, and would, perhaps, hear with the greatest satisfaction of his translation to England, or to a better country. As a consequence of this state of things, it is said that all the parochial institutions are in a decaying condition, while in the immediate neigh-
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bpurhood a sort of nondescript Dissent nourishes in a splendid building called Merrion Hall, erected and supported by voluntary subscriptions. Some of the anti-Ritualist party insulted the Archbishop when preaching in Mark’s church some months ago, in consequence of which the Young Men’s Society was dissolved by the Vicar.
The case of the Prayer-book v. the Bible has been carried on in Ireland with alternating success from generation to generation. Under the jurisdiction of Archbishop Whately the Bible was in the ascendant ; under the jurisdiction of his successor it is the turn of the Prayer-book. Scripture may be the rule of faith, but the Rubric must be the rule of practice. This tendency to magnify the liturgy and exalt the clergy is marked everywhere in the diocese. Many churches are now open daily for divine service, and the Holy Communion is celebrated every Sunday. This decided change shows how much a bishop can do in directing the consciences of his clergy, and altering their views of minis terial duty.
There is a curious routine of promotion in connexion with the livings in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church. The rule has hitherto been that whoever happened to be elected to the prebend of St. Michael’s ascended step by step through several parishes till lie came to one of the three best, when a vacancy occurred. Thus the prebendary of St. Michael’s proceeded first to St. John’s, second to St. Michan’s, and then to St. Mary’s, St. Thomas’s, or St. George’s. The last four parishes are at the north side of the city. With regard to the parish of St. George’s, however, the Dean and Chapter enjoy only the alternate presentation. St. Paul’s is another of the parishes at the north side of the Liffey in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church. It has been possessed by the present incumbent, the Rev. William J. H. Le Fanu, for the long space of thirty-two years. The net value is ^213. The total population of the parish is 10,000, spread very thickly over an area of 114 acres. Of this population — almost exactly what it was sixty-eight years ago — 2,635 belong to the Established
198 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Church and 7,074 are Roman Catholics, the remainder being Dissenters of various sects. The church, which is a sub stantial convenient building with a large tower, has accom modation, including the galleries, for GOO persons. But the attendance on Sunday mornings is not more than a fifth of that number. The Protestant constabulary from the Reserve depot in Phoenix-park help to swell the congregation, and there is a considerable number of children. Setting aside the constabulary, the number of adults of both sexes who regularly attend this old church, is probably not more than fifty. This is a small fraction out of r. Church population of about 2,500, and a total population of 10,000. Yet this is all the Establishment does in this very poor district for the spiritual instruction and guidance of the people. The rector is an amiable man, al\va;rs at his post, doing duty also as chaplain of the debtors’ pri>,mi called the City Marshalsea. He is said to be descended from Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but he does not seem to have inherited the genius of that gifted family. On the contrary, he appears to be quite at- home in an old church, situated in an old part of the city, where everything around seems to be sleeping, antiquated, and decaying.
Within a short distance of St. Paul’s is the parish church of St. Michan’s, the only church in Dublin bearing the name of a Danish saint. It is a capacious, antique-looking building, with a square tower, situated in a large grave-yard, crowded with ancient monuments. No wonder it was a favourite burying-place, for its vaults have an antiseptic quality, which prevents decomposition. Here lie the bodies, still undecayed, of the brothers Shcares, betrayed by Captain Armstrong, and hanged as rebels in 1708. The gross income of the parish is J?512, but the net income is set down at ^257. There is church accommodation for 1,300 people, though the total Church population of all ages is only 1,263, while the Roman Catholic population is 18,376. The district is very thickly populated, and remarkably poor — so destitute of houses that indicate anything like thriving even on a small scale, not to speak of prosperity, or any means of
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 199
employment for the masses that occupy the wide range of miserable narrow streets and lanes, in the midst of which the church is situated — that one wonders how those people can possibly manage to exist.
Here, then, is a parish in which, if anywhere, the work of the Establishment, as “ a missionary institution,” might be supposed to be carried out with the best chance of success. Among the clergy who have the strongest feeling with reference to the rights and duties of the Establishment in relation to the Romim Catholics is Dr. Stanford, a former rector of this almost exclusively Roman Catholic parish. During his incumbency, therefore, lie endeavoured to carry out this idea, and set about converting the Roman Catholic
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population around him. lie erected schools in the graveyard for the education of their children, and for the adults he set on foot controversial lectures in connexion with the Society for Irish Church Missions. The lectures were kept up incessantly, on Sunday evenings and week days, and, by means of handbills containing questions about the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, and challenges addressed to its clergy, which wore sown broadcast over the parish, Roman Catholics were “ affectionately invited to attend” in order to see their Church cut up and to hear their clergy denounced as deceivers and impostors. I am assured that no appreciable result followed, except the very natural one of arousing a bitter feeling of hostility in those whom the missionaries sought to win over to the Establish ment. When Dr. Stanford was moved up to a better parish his place in St. Michaii’s was taken by the late Rev. Mr. Abbott, who discontinued the controversial lectures, and did all he could to restore peace by letting the Roman Catholics alone. The Rev. Dr. Monahan, his successor, also abstained from this offensive mode of procedure. But he was very active in other respects in developing the more legitimate resources of the Church, of which he is one of the most estimable and efficient ministers.
Since the present incumbent came to the parish, the polemical plan of “driving away strange and erroneous
200 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
doctrine” has been resumed. Controversial classes have been re-opened, and the Roman Catholics are again affectionately invited to listen to discussions which have for their object to prove that the Pope is Antichrist, and the worship of the Host idolatry. This may possibly increase the number of conformists ; but it has one effect, which is to be deplored — the children attending the parish schools are hooted as they pass through the streets, though previously they had not been molested. The incumbent, a man of ability and energy, was formerly the London Secretary of the Irish Church Missions. It is natural that he should be zealous in the cause of Church .Missions to Roman Catholics, and that the controversial spirit should be strong within him ; and indeed he is only courageously carrying out the principle of aggres sive warfare against the Roman Catholic Church, by which alone, in the opinion of many of its advocates, the Establish ment can be defended. The majority of the Dublin clergy however, disapprove of the system. Its effect on the Sunday attendance is certainly not encouraging; for in the large church of St. Michan’s, which has sittings for 1,300 people, I found not more than about fiftv adults attending the retnilar
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morning service.
St. Mary’s is one of the few parishes in. Dublin that afford a fair opportunity of carrying out the parochial system, tt contains a number of Church people sufficient to supply a good congregation, with sittings for more than 1,000 persons, the Church population of the parish being 4,250. But the Roman Catholic population are four to one, amounting to nearly 19,000, for which the State makes no provision. In the hands of the present rector, Dr. Monahan, it is a model parish. Although this clergyman spent much of his life in college, he has shown an extraordinary aptitude for the duties of a parish minister. Distinguished as a scholar, he is at the same time practical in his turn of mind — an energetic worker in the reform of abuses and in the development of resources. In St. Michan’s he found his curates without any adequate support, one of them being obliged to keep a school; and he set to work with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 201
and otherwise, and got them ^200 a year each. And when the late Rev. Mr. Andrew, who spent nearly thirty years as curate in the diocese, died, leaving his widow and family destitute, Dr. Monahan set on foot a subscription, and raised for them the sum of £2,000. The Establishment would be strong indeed in moral support if the majority of its incum bents were like the rector of St. Mary’s. Fortunately, he has got a parish rich in institutions of all kinds — Sunday and boarding-schools and the finest widows’ houses in Dublin. One of these is called Madame Darner’s, situated in Great Britain-street, mid the other, which is in Denmark- street, is also called after its founder, Forticks. The widows of deceased householders of St. Mary’s parish are the claim ants of admission to the former, and are selected by a board of trustees, while those admissible to the latter are such as may appear to the rector of the parish deserving of the shelter thus provided.
The school-house, formerly a private residence, is one of the finest houses in St. Dominick-street, a relic of the old times, when it was a fashionable quarter of the city. The doors are of massive mahogany, and the ceiling elaborately and handsomely stuccoed. There is here an extensive parochial library, which is turned to good account ; indeed all the in stitutions of the parish are worked by the rector and his curates in the most efficient manner. The parish church is in excellent order, and is well attended. The late rector, Mr. Abbott, closed the burial-ground, and started a sub scription for taking down the heavy dismal Avail by Avhich it was surrounded, and substituted an iron railing. Dr. Monahan has had the fortune to be promoted very rapidly, without the help of aristocratic connexions, as it is only fifteen years since he was ordained, and he is now in pos session of one of the best of the Dublin parishes, the rent- charge being £827, and the net income, £650.
There is a chapel-of-ease connected Avith St. Mary’s, popu larly called the Black Church, originally built for the Rev. Hugh White, one of the most popular preachers of his day. It affords accommodation for 500. The senior curate is the
202 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Kev. Thomas Tomlinson, a truly estimable minister, who has been labouring diligently in this diocese for twenty-five years, and has never got any promotion, although he has brought up a large family, one of whom is a promising minister of the Church which has treated him so unkindly. For many years he did all the duty of the parish at Bray, the vicar of which was then a brother of Lord Plunket, Bishop of Tuam. When he died, the late Archbishop gave the living to his son, the present rector of St. Werburgh’s.
There is a parish called Grangegonnan on the northern borders of the city, formed of pieces cut off St. Paul’s and St. Michan’s, and containing a total population of only 4,470, of which the- Established Church claims 821. The living is £100 a year. This church, to which the rectors of the two parishes just mentioned appoint alternately, is quite unique in its way. Although the building was of the humblest character in size and style, it internally presented the appearance of an elaborate attempt, under difficulties, to produce a little mimic cathedral, after the high Catholic model. The rector is the Rev. W. Maturin. son of the eccentric novelist of that name, author of the tragedy of “Bertram;” “Woman; or Pour ct Contre ;” and “The Ro mance of the Albigenses.” It is related that the most brilliant productions of his genius were written in the dingy vestry of St. Peter’s Church, of which he was curate, and where the duns could not reach him. His son, the present incumbent of Grangegonnan, is a man of undoubted ability and learning, an able preacher, 1m t extremely ritualistic in his opinions and practices, and with a strong tincture of asceticism in his piety. He is a man of strong convictions, and very earnest in carrying them out. So completely Romanistic did the services of this church appear, that people wondered very much at their being tolerated so lono1 by Archbishop Whately, whose works on Romanism they so aptly illustrated. But if Mr. Maturin was then in the cold shade of opposition, he is now in the sunshine of favour. The present Archbishop seems fully to appreciate his perse vering endeavours to rehabilitate the ritual of the Church
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so as to exhibit its ancient catholicity, and clothe it in mediaeval costume, albeit it was but a tawdry imitation, and consistency would seem to have required that the genuine articles should have been sought at the altars of the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Maturin has proved himself to be a most disinterested niari, for he has refused several country livings offered him bv successive Governments, and he has
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just erected a new church, of course in the Gothic style, with “dim religious light,” produced by means of painted windows covered with saints, while the Communion-table is arranged in the form of an altar, and there are all sorts of inscriptions about the place in the illuminated letters by which the monks of the middle ages displayed their artistic skill, and a curiously-wrought stone font near the door which might serve as a model for ritualistic artists in England. It is said that a certain amount of jealousy is felt among the Dublin clergy at the very special consideration in which Mr. Maturin is held by the Archbishop, as of course they regard other clergymen in the diocese quite as deserving of his Grace’s favour. To any ruler of the Church, however, at all sympathizing in Mr. Maturin’s views, he must appear entitled to the highest consideration from his zeal, devotion, and charity. He has Communion every Sunday, and once a week besides, and keeps up choral service regularly in his church. He had for many years daily service, before others in Dublin thought of adopting the practice.
St. Thomas’s parish is one of the largest and best in Dublin, containing 774 statute acres, with a total population of about 30,000, of which 0,500, or about one in five, belong to the Established Church, the Roman Catholics being more than 20,000, and the rest Protestant Dissenters. The parish church is of the same ugly type that prevailed in the last century, with signs of an attempt at a tower, which, was never erected. There is accommodation for 1,500 people, and the net income is about £(300, the living being in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church. The Rev. Dr. Stanford received the appointment in 1855, after being twenty years in the ministry. So large a Protestant popu-
204 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
lation, not to speak of the Roman Catholics whom Dr. Stanford regards as apostolically and legally included in his charge, would fully occupy his time and energies even with the help of two curates. But his hands are full of extra- parochial work, being a member of almost all the committees of all the religious societies in Dublin, and the editor of the Christian Examiner. But the Protestant parishioners would be better pleased if their rector let literature alone, belonged to fewer committees, and gave more of his time and attention to his parochial duties.
St. George’s is another of the large city parishes north of the Liffey in which the Protestants muster most numerously. It comprises a district which was very much built upon during the present century, and the population has conse quently increased from 5,000 to upwards of 16,000. It comprises Mountjoy -square, Gardiner-street, Ecclcs-street, Cavendish-row, Great Denmark-street, and other streets chiefly inhabited by barristers and gentlemen of indepen dent means. The Established Church population amounts to 4,490, the Roman Catholics bein^1 upwards of 11,000, or nearly three to one. St. George’s Church maybe said to be the only ecclesiastical edifice erected by Protestants in Dublin, since the Reformation, which is really a credit to the city. Free from the unwholesome appendage of a grave yard, it stands upon the most elevated ground in Dublin, in the centre of a rectangular area, surrounded by handsome regularly-built houses, terminating to the west in a crescent, from which diverge three spacious streets, so that it can be fully seen in every direction. The building, cased with cut stone, presents four regular fronts. It is of the Ionic order, the decorations being executed in the most correct manner. The principal entrance is from the crescent in the centre of the western front, which is ornamented with a noble portico of four beautifully fluted Ionic colums supporting an angular pediment, with the inscription in Greek of “ Glory to God in the highest.” Over the portico, which extends forty-two feet, with a projection of fifteen, rises the steeple, of cut stone, highly decorated, divided into four storeys, and sur-
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mounted with a handsome spire, the entire possessing much elegance and lightness, and measuring in height 200 feet from the pavement. The interior dimensions are 84 feet by 60. The galleries are supported by projecting timbers, gracefully ornamented, rendering columns unnecessary. The decorations of the inside of the church are finished in a style which corresponds with its external l>e;uity, the ceiling being particularly admired, while all the arrangements are ad mirably adapted for the convenience both of the ministers and the worshippers.
This magnificent church, situated in the midst of a
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numerous and opulent Protestant population, by which it ought to have been crowded, has been for many years rather thinly attended. This state of things arises from the fact that there has been little or no regard paid to the real interests of the Church, or to the spiritual -welfare of the people, in the appointment of its rectors. The living is in the gift of Mr. Moses, and of the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church alternately. The “present incumbent was appointed by this body in 1844. He is precentor of Christ Church, a “ singing :’ man, the grand qualification for a parish minister, in the eyes of deans and chapters. The senior curate of the parish is the son of the Rev. Dr. Stuart, a Presbyterian clergyman in this city, who was so highly esteemed as a Biblical critic and theologian, that his congregation often included half a score Church clergymen. He was for many years one of the most popular preachers in Dublin.
The Dublin curates are not as badly paid as curates generally are in this country. In the larger parishes it was formerly the practice for the parishioners at the Easter vestry to assess themselves generally in the sum of £100 per annum for each curate, for a third or early morning service on Sundays. This was in addition to the legal stipend of £75 given by the rector. But since the passing of the Church Temporalities Act, the Ecclesiastical Commis sioners have taken upon them the payment of the curates out of the funds at their disposal, arising from abolished bishoprics, &c. In this way, and by the addition of marriage fees, the Dublin curacies are worth between ^190 and ^200
206 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
a year each in the larger parishes. In some cases they exceed ,£200, as in St. Anne’s, where the senior curate is also secretary to the Charitable Musical Loan Fund and in St. Mary’s, where the senior curate holds a lectureship, called the Ramsey Lecture, worth about £20 a year. Some one Dublin curate is elected by the city rectors every third year to a lectureship on the Church Catechism, instituted by Bishop Steariie of Clogher, worth £70 per annum, and tenable for three years. Three Dublin curates, now elected by each other, arc governors of an educational asylum in Camden-strect, founded by Dr. Pleasants, an eccentric physician, and receive for their trouble oP48 per annum. It thus happens that four Dublin curates are always in the enjoyment of better livings than many of the Dublin rectors. Besides, some of them, in addition to their curacies, hold chaplaincies, for which they receive special payment. The senior cuiute of St. Catherine’s is chaplain to the Richmond Bridewell, and the curate of St. Michael’s is chaplain of Kilmainliam Prison. Notice is here taken only of chaplain cies held in addition to the curacies with special stipends. In St. Peter’s Parish, the sum total received from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for curates has been redis tributed by the Archdeacon in various proportions amongst the clergy who assist him in this capacity, and who seem to have plenty of work in conducting the numerous Church services and charitable institutions in which the parish abounds, namely, the male arid female boarding schools, the daily schools, the infant school, the Sunday schools, the Mutual Benefit and Clothing Fund Society, the Widows’ Almshouses, the Coal and Provision Fund, &c.
The total number of officiating parochial clergy, incum bents, and curates in the city of Dublin is Gl. The total amount of revenue which they receive is ^14,836, allowing each curate £180 a year on an average. The total Church population in the Dublin parishes is 22,392, which is one to eight of the Roman Catholics. The number actually attending the parish churches is 11,000, and they cost the State £1 6s. Qd. a head.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 20?
CHAPTER X.
IN Dublin more than half the Episcopal population attend non-parochial churches, sometimes called free churches or proprietary churches, founded chiefly by the laity from time to time, in order that they might have their spiritual wants supplied by ministers whom they considered more evangelical, more spiritually minded, more earnest and active than the parochial clergy. In the course of time, the rapid increase of population in the southern suburbs rendered it necessary to erect new buildings, in order to meet the demand for church accommodation. The want was so generally acknowledged, that some of these churches have had districts assigned to them, so that the incumbents could celebrate marriages, baptize children, &c. ; but in some cases the rectors disputed their legal light to use the Sunday collections for the poor, arguing that they were robbing the poor of the parish churches by alienating from them the wealthy parishioners. It is a fact that the free church congregations are for the greater part far the most select, respectable, and fashionable, for they consist generally of those who are able to pay their way, and who prefer paying liberally for pews which they can call their own, and into which no strangers may intrude. And it sometimes happens that the gradations of wealth and respectability are marked by the position occupied by certain families in the church. Some gentlemen are trustees, or have been large contributors, or choose to pay a high figure for the best places, where they can hear and see and be seen to the greatest advantage ; and no doubt one cause of the success of these churches is that the worshippers may avoid unpleasant contact with people of inferior positions, some of whom may not be very well dressed, perhaps not over clean ; or they may be offen sive by the vulgarity of their manners, and therefore it would be very undesirable that strangers should suppose
208 IRELAND AND HKR CHURCHES.
they were in any way related to the highly respectable family to whom the pew belongs. There is an effort being made now by the High Church clergy to counteract these manifestations of the money power, and of the gradations of rank in the house of God, by taking the doors off the pews, abolishing pew-rents, and relying upon the “ offertory “ for the support of the ministrations of religion ; and there is a Church, St. Bartholomew’s, about to be opened on this principle. The incumbent is the Rev. Arthur Dawson, son of the lute Dean Dawson, who belonged to the Evangelical school of divines. But it has happened in this country, as in England, that the sons of leading Evangelical ministers in Ireland have become the highest of High Churchmen. This is understood to be the case with Mr. Dawson, who is private chaplain to the Archbishop. His faith in the voluntary principle is so strong, that he expects the new church to pay the clergyman and other church officers from the offertory, all the sittings being free and unappropriated. Possibly his expectations may be realised, for St. Bartholo mew’s is the centre of the Pembroke township, one of the most wealthy and aristocratic districts about Dublin. With respect to the country generally, it is another matter. If the experiment were successful, it would at once solve the grand Irish difficulty, and release the State from the burden of supporting the Church, and from an immense amount of odium, trouble, and vexation, which are still harder to bear than the financial impost. But the success of the experiment is very doubtful. People who love comfort, and are able to pay for it, will insist upon being protected from intrusion, and will have the exclusive enjoyment of their own pews, cushions, and hassocks.
The earliest of the Dublin free churches is the “ Bethesda,” situated in Dorset-street, at the north side of the city. Its first chaplain was the liev. B. Vi. Mathias, who had the reputation of being for many years the only church minister in Dublin who “ preached the Gospel,” or who, in other words, was “ evangelical.” He may therefore be said to be the forerunner of the revival which has produced the Evan-
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 209
gelical party in the Irish Church, and which in Dublin has its strength in the voluntary congregations. Dr. Walker, a Fellow of Trinity College, also preached in the Bethesda, but he ultimately adopted the opinion that there ought to be no clergy under the Christian dispensation, and he became the founder of a society called the “ Walkerites,” whose leading principles are still maintained by the “ Darbyites,” called after another seceding clergyman, the “ Plymouth Brethren,” the “ Christian Brethren,” and the “ Believers.” Mr. Mathias was succeeded in’ the chaplaincy by the Rev. Mr. Krause, who had been in early life a military officer, and served at Waterloo. He preached extemporaneously, and was a tremendously high Calvmist. A lady took notes of his sermons without, his knowledge, and many of them have been printed .under the editorship of the Rev. Dr. Stanford. Mr. Krause was succeeded by the Rev. John Alcock, who was inducted in 1852, and kept the church, which accommodates 1,400 people, well filled. He is now Archdeacon of Waterford.
Early in the present century, a youth from the county Clare, in the far South, one of a numerous family, arrived in Dublin, as he has often publicly stated, with five shillings
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iii his pocket. He managed to pass through Trinity College, and in due time was appointed to a church in Portarlington, and after that he became Vicar of Kinsallahan, where there were very few Protestants, but he had an opportunity of appearing on missionary platforms in Dublin, and thrilled the audience by the fluency, fervour, and power of his extemporaneous speaking. He was equally eloquent in Irish and English, and as the movement in favour of Catholic Emancipation began at that time to excite great interest in the Roman Catholic controversy, the young Munster clergyman became immensely popular as a champion of Protestantism and the Bible. In 1835 he was brought to
O
Dublin as assistant chaplain of the Bethesda, to which his preaching drew great crowds. This unfriended youth was John Gregg, the present Bishop of Cork. His numerous admirers resolved that he should have a pulpit of his own,
p
210 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and they built for him Trinity Church, which accommodates 1,800 people, and it was opened in 1839. He continued to labour there for twenty-three years, during which he was the most popular preacher in Dublin. His church was always crowded, and some of the most eminent public men were his regular hearers. Among these was Lord Morpeth, then Chief Secretary for Ire-hind ; and when that amiable nobleman became Viceroy, as Lord Carlisle, lie did not forget the eloquent and ardent minister of Trinity Church, and the consequence was that, in 180:2, Dr. Gregg became Bishop of Cork. Cork is one of the poorest of the sees, but the Church patronage is very great. Yet, Mr. Napier, late Lord Chan cellor, a member of Trinity Church congregation, doubted whether the Bishop had gained in emolument by his pro motion. From which we might infer that Trinity Church was then worth .I3 1,2 00 or £1,500 a year, though it was generally understood to bo only o(?<SOO or £ 1,000. It is now set down in the “Irish Church Directory” at £538. The Rev. John Nash Griih’n, a highly accomplished clergyman, ordained in 1842, is the present incumbent. As might be expected, the attendance is not as large as it was during the incumbency of Dr. Gregg.
It is worthy of remark here that the Bishops of Meath, Cork, Kilmore, and Deny had been connected with volun tary churches or churches outside of the parochial system. The late Bishop of Meath, Dr. Singer, formerly Fellow of Trinity College, was for many years Chaplain of the Magdalen Asylum, Leeson- street. The chapel accommodates 900 persons, and the chaplain has an income of £400 a year. The present incumbent is the Rev. F. Carmichael, formerly Curate of St. Werburgh’s and St. Bride’s, and Assistant Chaplain of this institution. He is an eloquent preacher, and has a highly intellectual congregation, a member of which has lately given ,£1,000 towards the building of a stone Gothic front to the chapel. Among its chaplains have been the Bishops of Me.itli and Deny, the able, humorous, and eccentric Caesar Otway, who wrote many brilliant things under the signature of “ C. O.,” and the Rev. Alexander Pollock,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 211
an able and popular minister, one of the secretaries of the Church Education Society, who died about two years ago.
There is a large number of these episcopal chapels in Dublin and the suburbs connected with various charitable institutions — some of them established solely for the purpose of having a chapel, and a minister supported on the voluntary principle. There are the chapels of the Female Orphan House, the Female Penitentiary, the Hibernian School, the King’s Hospital, the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, the Mariners’ Chapel, &c., which have congregations varying in size, but nearly all consisting of respectable and influential people. The most important of the free churches is St. Mathias, situated on the South Circular-road, in the parish of St. Peter’s, and having accommodation for 1,250 persons. The church, which is a substantial handsome building, without much pretension to ornament, is constantly tilled to overflowing, and the demand for sittings is such that
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applicants may have their names down, for months before any can be had. Although the congregation contributes .fGOO a year for the support of its ministers, and a consider able sum for its schools and other charities, it may be safely asserted that it pays more, and works more, for the promotion of religion at home and abroad than ten of the parish congre gations. The gentleman who has filled the post of chaplain since 184.<3, four years after he entered the ministry, is the Rev. Maurice F. Day, who is growing gray in the service, after twenty-three years’ hard work. Mr. Day is not a sen sation preacher, nor is he, in the ordinary sense, eloquent or popular ; but his preaching is distinguished by thorough knowledge of Scripture, sound judgment, great earnestness, with very little action, but a most impressive manner, which gives the stamp of truth, conviction, and a single purpose to all he utters, lie is, therefore, looked up to with the greatest respect by all the Dublin clergy who are known as “evan gelical,” and he is the man whom, if they could, they would have chosen to be their diocesan. Indeed, there is perhaps not one of the bishops appointed by Lord Palmers ton in Ireland who possesses the qualifications for the episcopal
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212 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
office, described in the New Testament, in a more eminent degree than Mr. Day. Yet the only distinction the late Archbishop conferred upon him was to make a pun on his name by way of illustrating the inconsistency of the ladies of Dublin, who, he said, “go to Duy for a sermon, and to Morrow for a novel.”*
Dublin, towards the close of the last century, adopted a course the reverse of what the Revolution introduced on the Continent. Instead of converting churches into scenes of dissipation, it converted places of amusement into churches and charitable i nstitutions. Thus, the gay haunts of Unnelagh became a convent ; the play-house of Smock-alley a parochial chapel ; and Astley’s Amphitheatre a house of worship and an asylum for blind females. The history of this institution is interesting. The house had been originally the family mansion of Sir Thomn.s .Molynenx. it was erected in 1711, and was at that time a grand residence, surrounded by a fashionable vicinity. \Vhen that part of the town, was deserted by its gay inhabitants, the family mansion was let by the Lite Sir ( .-. Molync-ux to a professional gentleman, whose representatives disposed of it to the well-known Mr. Astley, who built on the ground and offices in the rear of the dwelling-house his circus, where he continued to amuse the public many years with feats of horsemanship. From him it was taken by a candidate for public favour who pro posed to make it a ri val of Cro w-strcet Theatre. The attempt foiled, and the place reverted, by process of ejectment, to the family of the original proprietor. This seeming a fit oppor tunity for effecting their purpose, the subscribers to the Blind Asylum in 1815 took the whole concern at the annual rent of £100, and applied it to several purposes of charity. The dwelling-house, which is commodious and spacious, they fitted up for the reception of fifty blind females; and the amphitheatre, with some alteration, passed into a chapel connected with the institution. Where the scenes formerly stood now stands the altar of God; on the stage was erected the pulpit ; the pit and galleries retained their former desti- * Referring to Morrow’s Circulating Library.
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nation, and were crowded with the usual concourse of people. This is what has been known in Dublin as the Molyneux Asylum, the chaplain of which, for some twenty-five or thirty years, was the late Rev. Dr. Floury, a man of great popular talents, whose preaching kept the church always crowded by a respectable congregation. He had an extraordinary command of language, with a colloquial manner of delivery. Like Dr. Gregg, of Trinity Church, he always preached extemporaneously, and rivalled him in the attractiveness of his pulpit eloquence, while in private life he was greatly esteemed and beloved. Owing to the decayed condition of the locality about Peter-street, in which the church is situated, and its unhealthy character, it wns thought desirable to move to more healthy quarters in the suburbs. Accordingly, ground was taken in. Leeson-park, a district where there was scarcely a house a few years ago, but which is now covered with beautiful villas ami tenv.ci.js, occupied by wealthy people. On that site, which had presented the appearance of a swamp, rose, in a very short period, the most splendid monument about Dublin of the power of the voluntary principle in the Establishment — a church built in the Gothic style, light, commodious, and elegant in all its internal arrangements, and affording accommodation to 1,300 people, with an equally commodious asylum for the blind in the same style of architecture. Dr. Fleury had the satisfaction of seeing, before he was unexpectedly removed by death, this church crowded with the most respectable congregation, consisting, to a large extent, of people attracted to the neighbourhood by its erection. He was succeeded by his assistant chaplain, the Rev. Maurice Neligan, whose preaching keeps the church still full to overflowing.
In the same neighbourhood — Ranelagh — is Sandford Church, a quiet little place of worship, erected and endowed by Lord Mount Sandford for the late Archdeacon Irwin, one of the fathers, and perhaps the most esteemed and venerable of the Evangelical school in Ireland. He laboured in the ministry there till he was an octogenarian. His assistant chaplain and successor is the Rev. W. Pakenham Walsh, onQ
214 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of the ablest and best of the Dublin ministers — active in every Christian enterprise, and at the same time a devoted pastor. He has been Donnellan Lecturer in the Dublin University ; and though a. leading member of the Evangelical party, he was chosen by the present Archbishop to preach on the occasion of his first ordination in Ireland. Another line church has been erected and endowed at Rathgar out of a fund left for such purposes by the late Mr. Goold, a Dublin stockholder. It is beautifully situated, near the banks of the river Dodder, which divides it from Rathfarnham, opposite the extensive and well-wooded demesne of the Marquis of Ely, now occupied by the Lord Chancellor Blackburn e, and commanding a near view of the Dublin mountains. The pasture iields in which it lirst stood have been quickly covered with ihr.t-clnss terraces, which are all inhabited almost as soon as built. This church also is crowded with one of the most fashionable congregations about Dublin, the incumbent being the Rev. James Hewitt, formerly curate to Mr. Day. The rector of Rathfarnham, within whose parish this church is situated, instituted proceedings to get possession of the Sunday collections for the poor, to which it seems he had a legal claim, but the matter was compro mised by paying £20 a year to the parish church.
Harold’s Cross Church is another of the same class, built many years ago, mainly through the exertions of the Rev. Thomas Kingston, rector of St. James’s, in which it is situated. It stands at the entrance of the Mount Jerome Cemetery, the favourite burying-place of the Dublin Protestants, orna mented with very line old timber. It was the residence of the celebrated Mr. Keogh, leader of the Catholics in their struggles for emancipation towards the close of the last century — the O’Connell of his day, whose interesting old mansion is now the residence of the registrar of the cemetery. The minister of this church for many years was the Rev. Robert McGhee, the well-known polemical writer.
Another of the proprietary churches, and one of the most important, is the Episcopal Chapel, Upper Baggot-street, which accommodates 1,300 persons, and has a gross income of
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 215
^400 a year. The present Bishop of Kilmore, Dr. Hamilton Verschoyle, was appointed its chaplain in 1835, and continued at that post till he became bishop, in 1862, having been for many years one of the honorary secretaries of the Church Education Society. This position gave him great influence among the clergy ; though it would appear to have been anything but a recommendation to the Government, as Dr. Verschoyle was at the head of an institution hostile to its educational policy, which got its funds increased in propor tion to the vigour with which that policy was attacked by those who preached on its behalf. He was a judicious, but by no means a brilliant preacher, nor had he ever written or spoken anything1 to prove that he was a profound theologian. Yet ho is now the successor of Bishop Bedell, in the see of Kilmore, one of the best of the bishoprics, worth ^6,000 a year, with broad rich lauds, a.-; if to illustrate the poverty and destitution of the Irish Establishment. It is difficult to see any ground of pre-eminent merit which should entitle Bishop Verschoyle — estimable though he is personally — to one of the greatest prizes in the Church ; and allowing him all the merit which his most partial friends could ascribe to him, no one can say that he would not have been well rewarded with an income of £1, 000 a year, or that this sum would not have been ample remuneration for any duties he has to discharge as Bishop of Kilmore. So that in this one see alone Church property to the extent of £5, 000 or £0,000 a year might be released to provide for the spiritual wants of the population in other places. Many persons wondered why the Secretary of the Church Education Society got a mitre from a Liberal Government, pledged to support the National system. But it is said that Dr. Verschoyle modified his views materially about that time, concurring with the late Lord Primate in the opinion that the Church clergy might lawfully accept aid from the Government for their schools if they could not otherwise be supported. A pamphlet upon the subject brought upon him a storm of reproaches, for which he was consoled with the see of Kilmore, having first got the stepping-stone of the deanery of Ferns.
216 IRELAND AXD HER CHURCHES.
Dr. Verschoyle’s successor in the Baggot-street Episcopal Chapel, where he laboured for more than twenty years for a large and wealthy congregation, is an Englishman, and a “ literate ;” that is, one ordained without a university edu cation. He was ordained in 1859, and, though a young man, he received this important appointment, one of the best in Dublin, in 1802, the year of his admission to the diocese. Among the candidates for the post were many distinguished graduates of the Dublin University, and some ministers of recognised ability and considerable standing. Yet this comparative youth, whose use and abuse of the letters It. and /• at once betrayed his nationality and the small cost of his education, was chosen to minister to this highly intellectual congregation, not by universal suffrage, but by a body of trustees, consisting of the age*] Bishops of Cash el and Meath, the Bishop of Cork, Dr. Cayer, Ecclesias tical Commissioner, Master Brooke, and some other influen tial laymen. Mr. \\ i sidle, Chaplain of the Mariner’s Church, Kingstown, is also an Englishman, and a “literate,” chosen in the same manner, having curried off the prize from the alumni of the Dublin University. It seems difficult to account for this preference ; but, perhaps, it may be ascribed to the zeal, fluency, and fervour of the successful candidates, and their aptitude for visiting, and the management of, schools, charities, &c., thus holding out the best promise of tilling the church and bringing pecuniary support to its institutions. Others ascribe their good fortune to the fact that they had secured the favour of some of the most active and influential of the trustees. It must be said, on the other hand, that there are many Irish “literates” in the English Church, and that the late Bishop of Chester, Dr. Sumner, set the example of ordaining gentlemen of this class in his anxiety to meet the overwhelming spiritual destitution of his diocese. It should, however, be remarked that the number of “literates” is increasing fast, both in England and Ireland, chiefly from the fact that men who have re ceived a university education greatly prefer other professions, unless they have connexions and friends in the Church
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 217
holding out a prospect of something better than a curate’s salary, on which it is impossible to marry, unless marriage is to bring property, and very difficult for a single man to maintain the position of a gentleman. But the social status of a gentleman is secured by being a minister of the Estab lished Church, and the chances for curates intermarrying with the families of the gentry are numerous. This may account for the fact that some curates are willing to officiate gratuitously, and that the position is coveted by men of ability, who have risen from the ranks of the people by their own exertions, chiefly by means of tuition. In tins way, and also through conversions to Protestantism occurring in Trinity College, we may account for an increasing mixture of Celtic blood in the Irish clerical body, as indicated by the very large number of J/a.’As and O’s, and other native patronymics which we observe in the clerical lists. With this new blood there is an increase of zeal and energy in the ranks of the clergy ; and I have heard one of the ablest and most influential, as well as the most useful, of the Dublin clergy, state that the whole of the life, activity, and progress which have characterized the Irish Church during the last thirty years, and which may be said to have secured for it all the disinterested friends it h;’,s, is due to those of its ministers who belong to the middle classes; and that the younger sons of the aristocracy, and the landed gentry, who monopolize its good livings, have really done little or nothing to promote its welfare, either by their liberality or their labour. They regard it as a sort of patrimony of the aris tocracy, to help to keep up the dignity of “gentle blood.” And, indeed, the same tiling is true with regard to the progress of society generally in this country. The aristocracy and the large proprietors, as a class, have done little or nothing in the way of improvement. Go where we will through the country, all the indications of progress, of the expenditure of capital, of the employment of the people, of building, planting, reclaiming, manufacturing, mining, &c., in every department of industrial enterprise, will be found to be the work of the middle classes, and chiefly of corn-
‘218 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
mercial men. This is the class of men to which the Estab lishment owes all its redeeming features ; not merely the fine new churches and school-houses which have sprung up about Dublin and in other large towns, but, as I have said, the internal life and energy, which have kept the Church from dying a natural death. But it is a curious fact, and one worthy of the attention of Parliament, that the great commercial classes, which make money so fast and spend it so freely — the manufacturers, merchants, bankers, ship owners, brokers, railway proprietors, fund-holders, lawyers, doctors, &c. — are under no legal liability to contribute any thing whatever to thu support of the Established Church ; and, as a matter of fact, they do not contribute anything worth speaking of. The burden of that support is thrown entirely upon the land. At a large dinner party, consisting of the leading and wealthiest commercial men of Dublin, all members of the Established Church, the question was put to the company individually, how much they actually con tributed to the State Church under the compulsion of law, and the answer was not live shillings a head. They might attend their respective parish churches, have their pews free, and enjoy all the benefits of the parochial administrations, at the cost of a weekly copper to the poor-box. But they prefer contributing largely to the building of extra-parochial churches, in which they pay from £5 to £10 a year each pew-rent. If asked the reason why they pay for what they could get for nothing, they reply, because they can have ministers whom they like better, who are pleased to see them in their places on Sunday, who take an interest in their children, and visit their families, whereas they never saw the parochial or peculiarly State clergy, and never heard of them except in church on Sunday. It must be admitted that these are very important and suggestive facts in con nexion with the Irish Church question. Do they not prove that society has outgrown the Established Church system, and that it does not and cannot meet the requirements of the present age ?
Let us take another illustration of the working of the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 219
two systems. There is a very old decayed township called Irishtown, or Ringsend, 011 the bay, about two miles south of Dublin. In 1703, the inhabitants of this place having become numerous, in consequence of its being a port, and being not only distant from the Donnybrook parish church, but the people being prevented from resorting thither by tides, and waters overflowing the highway, an Act was passed authorizing Viscount Memoir to convey any quantity of land, not exceeding two acres, for a church and church yard for their accommodation, and the Archbishop of Dublin was empowered to apply £100, out of the forfeited tithes, towards the building, an endowment which afterwards took elieofc in the adjacent village of Irishtown. This was the origin of the chapelry called St, Mathew’s, of Ringseud, which is in the patronage of the Crown. The old church is still in existence, with a square and lofty belfry tower. In. the churchyard are the tombs of the Vavasour family, the Foxes of Tally, &rc. The present gross value of the living is £217, though the net value is set down at only £91. The incumbent has hold the ofiicc since 1831, that is thirty-five years, and his residence is Clifden and Irishtown. To Irish- town, however, the reverend gentleman is almost a stranger, and Clifden is his bond Jide residence. Now this town is situated on the very opposite point of the island, on the shore of the Atlantic, among the picturesque mountains of Connemara, county Gal way, where the reverend doctor pur chased an estate, and where no doubt he spends his time very pleasantly. In the meantime, the royal chapel of Bingsend has been served on Sunday mornings by a professor in Trinity College at the rate of a pound for every service. This is all the benefit derived by the now large population of that district, including Sandymount, from a church spe cially endowed with an income of over £200 a year. The military from Beggarsbush Barracks, in the neighbourhood, attended this royal chapel, where they had a special claim to pastoral instruction and oversight. But as the incumbent was looking after his estate in Connemara or fishing in its delightful mountain streams, they have been withdrawn
220 IRELAND AXD HER CHURCHES.
from the place. This is what the State Church has done for the last thirty-five years for a poor and populous district, duririo- which this valuable endowment has been allowed to
o
run to waste. But very near it stands another contrast — the beautiful church of Sandymount, erected and endowed chiefly by the munificence of the late Mr. Sidne}T Herbert (Lord Herbert of Lea), the owner of vast property in this neighbourhood. The minister of this church attended to his congregation, was constantly on the spot, ami had tho place always tilled. There are Churchmen in Ireland, men of the highest intelligence and true zeal, who believe firmly that in this manner, if the old parochial system was com pletely swept away, with all its buildings and endowments, an incomparably better Church machinery would be speedily substituted for it, and supported liberally out of the inex haustible, but almost un worked, mine of the wealth and zeal of the middle classes, with the immense advantage that the clergy of the regenerated Establishment would be tenfold more efficient than they can be, legally hampered, encum bered, and secularized as they a. re under the present condition of subserviency to the State, which virtually is controlled by the House of Commons composed of men of all creeds, who have voted the Irish Church Establishment “a monster iniquity.”
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CHAPTER XI.
THE last Bishop of Kildare was the Hon. Charles Lindsay, son of the Earl of Balcarres, in Scotland. He came over to this country as chaplain and private secretary to Earl Hardwicke, Lord Lieutenant. In 1803 he was promoted to the see of Killaloe, and was translated immediately to Kil dare. The same year, or the year following, he was appointed to the Deanery of Christ Church, which lie held in com- mendam, enjoying the revenues of both for forty-two years. He died in 1840, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. It is recorded by Archdeacon Cotton, that lie watched actively over the rights arid privileges of his cathedral ; that lie was a good scholar, of a refined taste, a great proficient in music, the founder and patron of the present school of sacred music in Dublin; and the inscription, on his monument in Christ Church states that his aspect was so benign and venerable that all acknowledged his presence to be the best comment upon Leviticus xix., 3:2, where it is written, “ Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God.” He lived and died at Glasnevin, near Dublin, where he left a charming residence for his family. There is nothing recorded of his administration of the diocese, concerning which we read only that he was enthroned at Kildare. Indeed, lie seems to have regarded it merely as an appendage to the deanery, in connexion with which he could better indulge his taste for music and enjoy the pleasures of society. Yet Kildare was once a famous place — the greatest head-centre of religion in Ireland, having for some time enjoyed the rank of an archbishopric, and hav ing been founded as early as the sixth century. The proper title, however, was not that of archbishop, but that of chief abbess, for that was the rank held by the foundress, St.
222 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Brigid, who employed a minister or bishop to perform the clerical duties of her cathedral, while her vestal virgins watched over the holy fire. This holy fire, arid the round tower, together with other circumstances, prove that Kildare was one of the principal places of Baal- worship, if not the greatest, in the island. The vast central plain, called the Curragh, was probably the Irish Stonehenge, where the representatives of all the pagan tribes assembled on great national occasions. The fame of the cathedral, and the miraculous power of the relics there preserved, continued to the Reformation, when the ploughshare of ruin passed through it. The total population of the diocese of Kildare is 98,369, of which 84,590 are Roman Catholics, the Protest ants being about one to seven. The number of benefices is forty-six, of which three are perpetual cures. The net income of the clergy is £8,230. The Crown has the patron age of eleven of the livings, and the bishop seventeen. In the “Irish Church Directory” there is a column for church accommodation, by which is meant the number of sittings for the inhabitants of the parish ; and we find that the cathedral of Kildare can accommodate only 200 people.
The theory of the Established Church is, that it should provide for the spiritual wants of the whole population, and especially that it should furnish means for keeping up the public worship of God throughout the land. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, determined efforts were made to carry out this theory by forcing all the adult inhabitants to attend the parish churches on Sunday. But if the whole people are to attend the Established churches, there should be room for the whole people in those churches. Now, in looking through the “Irish Church Directory,” we are struck with the utterly inadequate provision thus made for the people, especially in the rural parishes. Thus, the popula tion of Glasnevin is 1,550, and there is church accommodation for 150, that is, for about one in ten of the population. The total population in Rathfarnham is 5,083, and the Church population is 1,350 ; but the accommodation in the parish church is 600, not half sufficient for the Protestants, and not
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 223
affording room for more than one-ninth of the whole popu lation. Howth has a total population of 2,894, and a Church population of 380 ; but there is church accommodation for only 300. The parish of Rathdrum, one of the most im portant towns in the county Wicklow, contains a total population of 6,768, and a Church population of 549 ; but though the church is unusually good, and the patron is Mr. Benjamin Lee Guinness, M.P., there is room for only 400 worshippers. This parish is served by two efficient clergy men, and may be regarded as a favourable specimen of country parishes, including small towns ; yet I find, upon inquiry, that the average attendance on Sunday forenoon is not more than 100. In strictly rural districts, where the Protestants are thinly scattered, the attendance is miserable, in many cases consisting only of two or three families and persons officially connected with the church. There arc curious stories current on this subject, which would be amusing if grave interests and responsibilities were not involved. I have been assured by a rector, that when he was curate of a parish near Maynooth, on his way to church on Sunday morning, he regularly took up 011 his car the parish clerk and sexton, and these were the whole congregation. On one occasion the Duke of Leinster met a curate returning during the hour of Divine service, either from that church or another in the neighbourhood, and inquiring the cause of his being out so soon, the clergyman answered, “ She is ill !” There was, it appears, but one woman who attended the church, and it was no doubt a relief to the clergyman not to have to go through the service in a cold church under such circum stances. I have heard of one case where, to avoid the expense of a curate and the necessity of keeping open the church, the rector advised a widow lady and her family to go to mass, assuring her that the Roman Catholic service contained a good deal of truth — that she could discriminate, choose the good and refuse the evil, like cattle, which instinc tively select the wholesome herbage in a pasture, and pass over the rank tufts of grass that would not be good for their health.
224 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
One of the most extraordinary things connected with the Irish Church is the fact that it has not been able to embrace within its fold even the population of the English Pale. Setting aside the new townships at the south side of the metropolis, all of which have sprung up during the last twenty or thirty years, I iiud the peasantry of the counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, and Wieklow as completely Irish in their mnnners and habits, r.nd as thoroughly devoted to the- Church of Home, as the people of Tipperary or Cork. The o-entrv, for the most part, are Protestants; but the great dead walls which surround their demesnes and shut out the public view, do not more significantly mark their exclusive spirit and the separation between them and the frieze-coated farmers around them than the social and religious wall of separation between them and the mass of the population. It seems wonderful that during so many ages the ruling and wealthy classes did not succeed better in imparting their religion and manners to the people oven within the Pale, and on the very borders of the metropolis. Tntil the cr>-m- mercial element came into operation, increased largely by English and Scotch settlers, there \vas not a trace of progress or improvement about the suburbs of Dublin. The same mud walls, open dvkes, untrimmed hedges, and dirty roads, alternately covered with mud and dust, without a seat for the weary traveller, or the leash accommodation for the comfort of the people, continued from generation to gene ration. Neither the aristocracy nor the Established clergy seemed to spend a thought upon the inhabitants of their estates and parishes, except as machinery for producing rents and tithes and returning members to Parliament. As, there fore, no Scriptural, rational or humane efforts were made to Protestantize or civilize the people, they remained in their primitive state, or relapsed from the Established Church into the Church of Rome, as much estranged from their so-called
o
“natural protectors” and their authorized ministers as if Henry II. had never invaded the country and Henry VIII. had never reformed the Church.
But although, in the united diocese of Dublin and Kildare,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS.
225
the proportion is very small between the Church population and the Roman Catholic population, and although the actual attendance at public worship is seldom as large as it ought to be, and too often merely nominal, the proportion between the incomes of the clergy and the amount of church accom modation is remarkable. The average is about one pound per annum for every person that could find room in the church; and, as the churches are seldom half full, — often not more than a third or a fourth full — it happens that in the metropolitan diocese the incumbent receives generally two or three or four pounds a head for all those who actually attend his public ministry. As illustrations of this, I give a few examples from the “Irish Church Directory”: —
Castleknock, .
Chapel izod, .
Clondalkin,
Cloninethan, .
Cool lock,
Donaghmore, .
Dunnganstown,
Dunlavin,
Finglass,
Foiustown,
Gams town,
Glanelg,
Inch,
Killcullen,
Kilsallahan, .
Glashill,
Luxlip,
Lusk,
These cases are nearly all taken from the diocese of Dublin. Many of them are parishes near the city. They could be multiplied to any extent, showing that the number of pounds sterling allotted originally for the support of the pastor greatly surpasses the number of sittings provided for the accommodation of his hearers. If we were to examine the lists, we might find throughout the country at large hundreds of parallels for the sinecure city parishes. In fact,
Church
Church
Gros* Income!.
Accommo dation.
Benefice.
Gross Income.
Accomm dation.
£544
600
Maynooth,
294
160
254
300
Narragliinore,
502
125
4:30
200
Newcastle,
241
Nil
494
150
Newcastle Lyons,
252
100
232
180
Raheny,
300
100
368
300
llatheoole,
397
120
585
600
Rathdrum,
460
400
492
380
Eathmichael,
221
75
283
250
llathmorc Union,
329
200
257
100
Santry,
392
230
357
170
Swords,
329
300
207
200
Timolin Union,
334
150
374
250
Wicklow,
655
700
375
250
Bally sax,
170
120
250
100
Ballysonnon, .
347
200
1,045
200
Clone, .
349
300
530
300
Coolebanagher,
454
200
300
200 ,
226 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
we should find that the parochial system works as badly in the country as in the towns, and that, in order to main tain it, the funds of the Church are most culpably wasted.
Another bad feature of the system is the existence of pluralities — a class of abuses which may be called an ini quitous perversion of sacred funds, for which, of course, the State, as well as the Church, is responsible, and in reference to which bishops are the greatest delinquents. The rector of Kill is a .sample of the old pluralists once so common. His father was the celebrated Bishop Warburton, whose ordination was a matter of dispute among the curious. The Church directories of a few years back showed a blank in the place where the date of Mr. Warburton’ s admission to his Kildare benefice ought to be. In. the edition of Charles’s “Church Di.vectory” for last year, the date 1845 is given as the year of his admission. But the Rev. Dr. Brady, in his “ Cork Records,” gives a different account. It there appears that Mr. Warburton has held the unions of Kill and Lyons from the year 181-1, and, along with it, from the year 1818, the precentorship of Limerick— and, from 1825, a vicar- choralship in Cloyne, and, from 182G, another vicar-choralship in Cork, and, from 1829, the sinecure rectory of Drumcliffe, in the diocese of Killaloe. The official responsibilities of Mr. Warburton thus extended over five dioceses. He was the legal pastor of 108 Church people, 1-1 Dissenters, and 980 Roman Catholics, in Kildare diocese. In Limerick diocese the State gave him charge of 237 Episcopalians, 81 Dis senters, and 3,611 Roman Catholics. In other words, he was the authorized pastor of more than 5,000 souls, scattered over six parishes in two different provinces, the vast majority of the people thus committed to his “care” being Roman Catholics, who repudiated his authority altogether. For all these “services” he had a gross revenue of £430 17 s. Gd. from Kill, and £754 3s. 8d. from his Limerick precentorship. It was also his duty to sing in the cathedrals of Cork and Cloyne, for which no doubt he was paid well, although the returns of Captain Stacpoole contain no record of the amount. He enjoyed, however, the gross revenue of £229 Gs. Gd. from
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 227
his sinecure in Killaloe. Thus, exclusively of his vicar- choralships, he had a gross income of £1,415 7s. 8d. per annum for ministering to a total of 237 members of the Established Church, if by possibility he could minister to people living so remote from one another. One of the last acts of the late Lord Monteagie was to attend the primary visitation of Archbishop Trench at Limerick, to represent the want of a curate to perform divine service in one of Mr. Warburton’s Limerick parishes. It was simply a physical impossibility that ever Mr. Warburtoii could have earned this income. If he sang in Cloyrie, he could not sing in Cork ; if he sang in either place, he could not preach and visit at Drumciifte ; and if he did his duty in Limerick, he could not do it in Kildare. Certainly his mitred father had much to answer for when he went to give an account of his stewardship. The common excuse for the nepotism of bishops is that they have a right to give livings to their sons if their sons can perform the duties as well as others. But what excuse can be made for a bishop who loads his son with the revenues of the Church under circumstances which render the duties incompatible and their performance impos sible, thereby robbing the Church of the means of paying the men by whom the duties could be done, and so robbing the Christian people of the ministrations of religion to which they are entitled?
Another of the old race of pluralists, the incumbent of Hollywood, in the county Wicklow, was the Hon. and Very Rev. James Agar, Archdeacon of Kilmore, son of an arch bishop, and, being the son of an archbishop, naturally an arch-pluralist. Mr. Agar held the Archdeaconry since 1809, more than half a century, and the Hollywood living since 1814. Hollywood contains only 87 members of the Estab lished Church, while the Roman Catholics number 1,654. He had a parish as Archdeacon in Kilmore, which contains 1,182 Church people, 295 Dissenters, and 4,045 Roman Catholics. It is difficult to ascertain which of the parishes was blessed with his presence. According to Captain Stac- poole’s Returns, p. 25, Archdeacon Agar was a resident iii
Q2
228 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Hollywood, but at p. 34 ho was said to be non-resident there, and to have a faculty for that purpose. A friend suggests that the difficulty may be solved by supposing that the venerable pluralist lives neither at Carrigallan, in the diocese of Kilmore, nor at Hollywood, in the diocese of Dublin, but at Stephen’s-green, in this city, so as to avoid causing any unnecessary jealousy between the rival candi dates for the favour of bis ministrations. For the northern parish he received a- gross revenue of £1,075, and for Holly wood £169 4*. 10.’ 7. Out of this income of about £1/200 he paid three curates a total sum of £225 annually. Of course he conscientiously believed that it was for the benefit of the Church that lie should have received about £1,000 a year for fifty years, while the duties for which he received it were discharged by three other ministers for ono-fifth of that amount. But it may occur to Church reformers in this age of inquiry to ask whether the Archdeacon had not deceived himself in this matter, and whether there is real advantage in paying so dearly for Church ornaments of his class.
Perhaps the most remarkable clergyman in Kildarc diocese is the Rev. John Brown, treasurer of Kildare, registrar of
‘ o
the diocese, and rector of the parishes of Great Connell, Ladytown, and Ballymanny. His parishioners consist of 1,4.’>!) Anglicans, 69 Dissenters, and 2,959 Roman Catholics; and he has one church, yet he does not reside, being exempt (as registrar) by the 5th Geo. IV., cap. 91, s. 9, and he keeps no curate. In the returns made by this gentleman to the queries of the Archbishop touching his duties as registrar, he makes an extraordinary statement, to the effect, that al though unable, through illness, to give full information, the office is always open to the public for business. He keeps no clerk and no curate, is not resident, and yet serves a church and keeps an open office !
The anomalies and abuses in this metropolitan diocese are very numerous. I can only give a few of the most striking examples. Balscadan is one, of which the vicar, appointed in 1844, resides in York-street, Dublin, has no church and 110 duty. He is employed, however, as one of the Inspectors
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 229
of the Church Education Society, and it must be confessed that he could not live on the income, which is only £44 net. It is stated that a church is being built, but I cannot see for what purpose, as the total population is only 778, and the Protestant population 28.
Castledermot Union has a total population of 3,759, and a gross income of £489. The incumbent since 1837 has the reputation of being an ecclesiastical Croesus; and if he loved souls as well as he is said to love sovereigns, the people of his charge would perhaps be better cared for than the people in any parish in Ireland. But he generally lives on the Continent, and the sight of his nice in the parish is as rare as the sight of his money, which is saying a great deal. The parochial duties, however, are performed by his curate, who does the best he can to supply the rector’s lack of service with the small stipend allowed him. There are no schools in the parish.
The rector of Glasnevin, the Rev. H. G. Carroll, is an able man, an eminent classical, biblical, and oriental scholar, having the reputation of being well acquainted with Arabic and Syriac, as well as the modern Continental languages ; and yet he has been so unappreciated by the dispensers of patronage, that he has got a stipend of £126 a year, which he owes to the authorities of Christ Church. Here then we have a distinguished scholar of Trinity Col lege, Dublin, a biblical prizeman, remarkable among his contemporaries for profound and extensive scholarship, treated as if he were the merest clod. This case strikingly illustrates the statement current among the clergy here, that some of the best scholars of the diocese have been most neglected, and that the most precious talents committed to the Church have been deliberately buried by its rulers.
The incumbent of Drumcondra, near Dublin, though hav ing a small income, enjoys the comfortable position of being his own patron, and of having appointed himself to the living. The fine old church of Rathfarnham , near Dublin, most favourably situated, in the midst of a total population of nearly 6,000, has been in an unsatisfactory condition for a long time. The rector, since 1853, is an able preacher, but
230 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
he has unfortunately no residence in the parish save the vestrv-room of the church, while his family live in a remote part of the county ; so that it is impossible that he should be able to discharge the duties of such an important parish in a way that would be desirable. It contains not only a large number of the poorer classes, but also a number of the gentry, including the late Lord Chancellor, Mr. Brady, the present Lord Chancellor, Sir Robert Shaw, &c. There are various other instances of incongruities, strangely jumbled together in consequence of the present system of patronage. The rector of Taney, with a gross income of £398, is a pastor of a parish which includes the populous and rapidly- increasino- village of Dundrum. He is a distinguished
CT5 O O
logical and ethical “grinder” in the Dublin University; that is, he prepares private pupils for their examinations in those departments of science. As u tight be expected, his preach ing partakes of the character of his weekly studies, being very logical in form, laboriously raising difficulties of which his hearers would never have dreamt, as if for the purpose of giving them a learned refutation, which tends sometimes to bewilder rather than guide. When the present Arch bishop arrived in Dublin, some friends of Dr. M— - indis creetly put forth in the press his claims to be appointed archdeacon of the diocese, on the ground of his experience as a parish minister ; but when his Grace came to inquire into the matter, he found that this parochial minister was in the habit of spending many hours every day in the university instructing his pupils, as he had been doing for a great many years; so that his parochial experience must have been very limited. Such a parish as Taney ought to give him abundant occupation ; and every one knows that the union of a parish minister and a college professor in the same person is not at all desirable. Those whose business it is to grind youth in the elements of knowledge are, as preachers, proverbially “dry.” Yet the clerical members of the Dublin University are not satisfied with the unrivalled advantages afforded to men of learning in that magnificent and exceedingly wealthy corporation.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 231
CHAPTER XII.
MEATH is unique among the dioceses of Ireland, and its bishop enjoys peculiar distinctions and prerogatives which entitle it to rank next the See of Dublin. It is true that it has no cathedral, nor dean, nor chapter, the archdeacon being the only subordinate officer; and during the time when bishops were elected, the royal congd d’dlire was directed to him and the clergy in general. The affairs of the diocese are transacted by a synod of the clergy, who have a common seal of great antiquity. The bishop ranks next to the arch bishops, and he is the only one in the United Kingdom who is, like them, styled most reverend. He also enjoys the title of Right Honorable, being ex-officio a member of the Privy Council in Ireland. The importance of the see arises from various circumstances. It presents a striking example of the fact, that in the early Irish Church bishops were so numerous that they could be regarded as little more than pastors of small towns and villages with the respective sur rounding districts, the population being clustered in particular localities, which they cultivated, having ranges of wood or mountain as pasture land in common. Meath contained in ancient times the following dioceses : — Clonard, Fore, Trim, Dunshaughlin, Slane, Ardbraccan, and several others, all of which were consolidated in the twelfth century with a common seal. Duleek and Kells, two other ancient sees, were subsequently added ; and finally, in 15G8, the see of Clonmacnoise was, by Act of Parliament, likewise consoli dated with Meath. So that, in fact, we find no less than nine ancient sees composing this one modern see ; and if we bear in mind that at the time when those sees were founded the population could not have been more than a fourth of what it is now, we shall be able to conceive the difference
232 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES,
between an ancient and a modern bishop, and to recognise in the latter functionary nine bishops rolled into one, with probably ninety times the income enjoyed by each of his primitive component parts.
Archdeacon Cotton has printed for the first time, from the original in the Rolls Office, Dublin, the Act of the Irish Parliament by which Glonmacnoise was united to Meath. The preamble states that “Whereas the Bishoprick of Clon- macnoise is now vacant, and of so small revenues and profits as it is not equal to a living with good parsonage in some churches of this realm, by reason whereof the poor inhabit ants within this diocese are utterly destitute and disap pointed of a good pasture ; and thereby of long time being kept in ignorance as well of their duties towards God as also towards the Queen’s Majesty and the commonwealth of this realm, to the great danger of their souls ; and that the same diocese doth so adjoin unto the bishoprick of Mcath as the bishop of that diocese might very conveniently instruct and edify the poor and needy of the other, if the same were united and consolidated to it, whereof should follow that the people shall be fed with sound doctrine for their souls’ health; and also by the good policy of the reverend father that now doth to the great utility of the subjects, and good advancement of service, occupy the see of Meath, shortly brought and reduced to a great civility, and consequently to a wealth, which thing would much increase the force of this realm.”*
This Act is a literary curiosity, on account of its ortho graphy. For example, bishop is spelled “busshoppe,” autho rity is “aucthoritie.” Sometimes bishop is spelled with y instead of ?/, might is “inoughte,” and so on. The Act is signed as follows : — “Le Seigneur Deputie le Veoulte.”
The bishop so highly eulogised in the preamble was Dr. Hugh Brady. He was a great favourite with Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy, who, in a letter to the Queen, calls him the honest, zealous, and learned Bishop of Meath, a godly minister of the Gospel, and a good servant of your
* “ Fasti,” vol. iii., p. 133,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 233
Highness. In that letter Sir Henry described the condition of the Church as being most lamentable — “as foul, deformed, and as cruelly crushed as any other part of this sore and sick realm. Your Majesty,” he added, “may believe it that, upon the face of the earth, there is not a Church in so miserable case.” As remedies he recommended that ministers should be sought out in Scotland or elsewhere who could speak Irish, and that English bishops should be sent over as likely to be “not only grave in judgment, but void of affec tion.” Elizabeth, we know, did not patronize Irish, eA’cn though imported from Scotland. As to English bishops there were plenty of them ; but, with lew exceptions, they were far from answering the Lord Deputy’s description, and it is to be feared that his favourite, Dr. Brady, who was an Irishman, however “grave in judgment,” was not altogether ‘•’void of affection “ for the good things of this life, nor as careful as lie ought to have been of the property of the Church intrusted to his stewardship. At all events he and his successors failed lamentably in the promise to instruct, civilize, edify, and comfort the poor people of Clonmacnoise. So far as the Established Church is concerned, this work is still to be done.
Clonmacnoise is situated within ei^ht miles of Athlon e,
O
about the centre of the island. It was once called the Seven Churches, and was one of the most celebrated ecclesiastical settlements in the country, having a college and various monastic buildings, with a cathedral and bishop’s residence. Notwithstanding its present desolate aspect, its former greatness is attested by a mass of most interesting ecclesias tical ruins. It was called the lona of Ireland and the Mecca of Irish hagiology. The feeling experienced in visiting such ruins is like that of travellers in the Holy Land, who wonder how it was possible for a great and numerous people to have existed in such desolate and sterile regions. Thus, the Rev. Csesar Otway exclaimed, “What a dreary vale is Glenda- lough ; what a lonely isle is Inniscultra ; what a hideous place is Patrick’s Purgatory ; what a desolate spot is Clon-
234 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
macnoise ! From this hill of Bentullagh, on which we now stood, the numerous churches, the two round towers, the curiously overhanging bastions of O’Melaghlin’s Castle, all before us to the south, and rising in relief from the dreary sameness of the surrounding red bogs, presented such a picture of tottering ruins and encompassing desolation as I am sure few places in Europe could parallel.” When this description was written, in 1839, the moral aspect of the people visiting the place presented a melancholy illustration of the failure of the Church to which the work of national instruction was assigned by the State three hundred years ago.
The monuments of ancient princes, bishops, and abbots, were swarming with motley crowds of mourners seeking the graves of their departed relatives, “devotees crawling from point to point of the reputedly sacred circle; invalids scraping for holy clay, or waiting a cure by contact with sward and stones ; rustic virtuosi gaping and stumbling in search of some denouement to the mystery which their dull minds have long associated with the name of the Seven Churches ; and multitudinous sots staggering after the few brains they have lost on the adjoining patron green, or reeling and wabbling with a drunkard’s speech to partake of the last dregs of debauchery at the close of the orgies of the patron.” It should be remarked, that the Roman Catholic bishops and clergy have since exerted themselves, laudably and successfully, in most places to put down the abomina tions of mingled superstition and licentiousness, so utterly heathenish in their nature as well as their origin, which attended the anniversaries in honour of patron saints.
In 1C 22 Archbishop Ussher made the following return to a royal visitation : — “ Clonmacnoise, — This deanery was in times past a bishopricke. There has been in times past, belonging to that bishop, a deanery yet continuing — an archdeaconry and twelve prebendaries, all long since wasted and extinct; which all were maintained by the offerings and funerals, the churches of Clonmacnoise being the ancient
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 235
burial-places of the kings of Ireland, and of the best of the nobility of the same. There is one churchyard and ten churches, whereof two are in reasonably good repair.”*
The diocese of Meath contains a large tract of the best land in the country, the famous grazing district in which its best cattle are fattened, and which sends the finest beef and mutton to the English market. It is the richest portion of the vast plain which stretches across the island from the sea to the Shannon, and lies between the Boyne and the LifFey. Within the county of Meath is situated the cele brated Tara Hill, where, long before the introduction of Christianity, and long after, the monarch of Ireland held his court, and received the homage of a host of tributary kings, each nearly as independent as himself. The monarchy of Ireland was afterwards separated from the kingship of Meath, which was, properly speaking, the patrimony of the monarch, and which, owing to the richness of the country and the absence of natural defences, was continually the prey of plundering invaders from the north. In later times it was the scene of some of the most important events in the civil wars. The native Irish had recovered the greater portion of it from the English colony before the Reformation. During the rebellion of 1641, the English occupied its chief town, Trim, as a military post, which was unsuccessfully besieged by General Preston in ] 047 ; became an asylum for the royalists in 1649, after the battle of Rath- mines ; and, after the massacre of the garrison of Drogheda, it surrendered to Cromwell’s forces. In 101)0, the famous battle of the Boyne, which may be said to have decided the destiny of the United Kingdom, was fought, partly in the county Meath, through which the defeated army of James was pursued in its southward retreat.
Considering, then, the importance of this rich district lying so near the capital of the Pale, so full of historic in terest, so studded with abbeys and monasteries, and made classic ground by great battles, it is surprising that it was not, either by Elizabeth or James I., planted by Protestants, * Cotton, vol. iii., p. 143.
236 IRELAND AND HER CHTJRCPIES.
and that many of the old Catholic nobility were permitted to retain their estates in a region so desirable for the re formers to possess and people, if for nothing else, that they might have near the metropolis a body of loyal yeomanry on which they could rely to repel the attacks of the O’Byrnes, OTooles, and other native enemies to the English and the Protestant interest. This was not done, however; and it is a curious fact, that in scarcely any part of the island has the work of assimilation between the English and the Irish made less progress, and in few places out of Connaught has the Established Church a feebler hold on the native population. Nor is there any diocese which has more glaring anomalies, as appears from Captain Stacpoole’s returns. There are fourteen parishes wholly destitute of any provision for the cure of souls, thirty-eight parishes which have no churches, twenty-one which have no income, and some which have incomes varying from £’2 l()s. to £20. The diocese contains .105 livings, comprising 130 parishes, supposing Fercall to consist of six. Archdeacon Cotton lias placed this diocese in the province of Ulster, meaning, of course, the ecclesiastical province of Armagh. But the only portion of the diocese which is situated in Ulster is one parish in the border county of Cavan. It comprehends nearly the whole of the counties of Meath and Westmeath, a large part of the King’s county, and small parts of Longford and Kildare, the latter two counties having but one parish and one church each. The length of the diocese is eighty, and its breadth twenty statute miles, having an area of about 993,000 acres. In 1831 the population of the diocese was 377,859 ; the number of parishes, 206 ; of benefices with cure, 102 ; of resident incumbents, 89 ; and of non-residents, 14. The tithes were valued at £27,416 ; the glebes, at £7,251 ; the gross income, £36,480; and the net income, £30,291. There were then nine benefices without churches, the total number of churches being 99, with something over 20,000 sittings. In 1834 the population consisted of 377,562 Roman Catholics, 25,626 members of the Established Church, and 800 or 900 Presby terian or Protestant Dissenters. At that time the Church
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 237
population bore to the Roman Catholics the relation of about one to fifteen. Two benefices contained no member of the Established Church, five contained only 20 members each, eleven not more than 50, twenty not more than 100, and twenty-five riot more than 200 each.
The case of Donaghpatrick shows how the property of the Establishment, as well as the interests of religion, has been treated under the eyes of the bishops, and by the bishops themselves. It is now the church of the union of Kilberry and Donaghpatrick. Formerly there were three churches, one in each of those parishes, and a chapel at Randalstown. Two of the buildings are now in ruins. Eighty acres of valuable land, which belonged to the parish of Donagh patrick, was passed in fee-farm, in 1571, to Plunkett, of Felton, by John Everard, the incumbent, the bishop, and Richard Everard, of Randalstown, the patron, for a reserved rent of £4 a year. But of this property 110 trace is now discoverable, nor does the present incumbent get the re served rent. The manse house, hagyard, and orchard mentioned in old records have also disappeared. The alienation of the eighty acres was a job between the patron and an incumbent, to which the bishop, Hugh Brady, was a party ; the same prelate who stated that he would have been eaten up himself if he had not kept open house for the people who surrounded him, complaining of his lack of means to meet this unlimited but necessary hospitality. Possibly, it was in consequence of difficulties of this kind that he betrayed his trust, and made away with the property of the Church. A report on the state of this diocese towards the end of the sixteenth century illustrates the frauds that were then practised in order that a friend might enjoy two or three livings. The rector of Kilberry resided in another parish, which the bishop certified to be two miles off’, whereas it was nearly twenty miles, and the incumbent was repre sented as serving both parishes. Under the ruins of the church of Kilberry an altar slab was recently dug up by the present rector, Dr. Brady ; and its position shows that it belonged to a still older church, much larger than the one
238 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
whose ruins still remain. The ancient font lies buried in the churchyard. According to the “ Irish Church Directory,” the church accommodation for the people of this union is eighty sittings, while the gross income is £373, and the net income, £270. In the union there is a population of 1(5,000, of which thirty persons, young and old, belong to the Established Church, and there is one solitary Dissenter. It was, 110 doubt, under the impression produced by these facts that Dr. Brady wrote to the Times a letter, in which he frankly avowed his opinion that it is “a great moral iniquity” that the whole Church revenues of the nation should be appropriated to the clergy of one small sect. This daring assertion he had previously made in the pulpit of the Chapel Royal, as one of the Viceregal chaplains ; and it was to this he ascribed the fact that when Lord Wodehouse became Viceroy his name was omitted in the list of Vice regal chaplains, who are privileged to preach to the Irish Court, and from whom the Irish bishops are usually selected. The truth is that Dr. Brady’s own case furnishes a striking illustration of the anomalous state of the Establishment. He is an ecclesiastical historian, a learned investigator of old records, a diligent and honest inquirer, and an able statis tician — a department in which there is much work to be done in this country — as he has shown in his “ History of the Diocese of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross ;” and he, perhaps the most competent man in the Church to do the work, in stead of being set apart for it by the bishops, or placed in one of the Dublin cathedrals, where he might have leisure to do it, is rector of a parish in the country, where there are but thirty members of the Established Church, not one of whom, perhaps, can appreciate his learning. Dr. Brady is too candid to say that he went to Donaghpatrick because he believed he was providentially called to minister to its thirty Church Protestants and its solitary Dissenter; still less would he claim to be the divinely-appointed pastor of the Roman Catholics there, in the room of their own parish priests. Then, it may be asked, how can he, as a Christian minister specially qualified for a totally different kind of work, con-
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 239
sistently and reasonably account to the Divine Head of the Church for being there at all ?
Similar observations might be made with respect to other men in that diocese. There is, for example, the Rev. Dr. Dobbin, a distinguished scholar, B.D. and LL.D. of the Dublin University. He is well known as the learned author of several theological and other works, among which may be mentioned one 011 the celebrated “ Codex Montfortianus,” which is in Trinity College, Dublin, and contains the much controverted text, 1 John, v. 7. He also answered in a very able manner Strauss’s “Lebcn Jesu,” in a work entitled “ Tcntaiium Anti-Straussianum.” Here, then, is a divine qualified by his learning for one of those professor’s chairs in the Dublin University which are “ occupied “ by gentlemen with large populous parishes ; and yet he is buried in a parish in. the diocese of Meath, with an income of £137 a year, and a church population of 145 persons of all ages, upon whom his learning is utterly lost. There are other cases of a similar kind, such as Dr. Gibbings, of Tessauran, who has published lectures on Church history, and edited the Papal Index Expurgatorius, and ministers to a rural population of 1G2 persons, of whom 100 are the most that may be expected to attend church on Sunday ; and for this work he enjoys a benefice, the net value of which is set down at £300, although its 666 acres of glebe land ought to be worth at least four times that sum. The only other case of buried talents I shall mention in this diocese is that of the Rev. Dr. Reichel, of Mullingar. He was for a number of years Professor of Latin in Queen’s College, Belfast, having been a very distinguished student of Trinity College, Dublin, and having also studied at one of the German universities. Perhaps his talents might have been turned to better account than they were as a Professor in one of the Queen’s Colleges. But surely it was not a wise exercise of patronage for the Crown to place him in the county of Westmeath, with a net income of £215 a year, in a town where church people are in the proportion of about one to nineteen of the population, where so learned a man must have some diffi-
240 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
culty in making himself understood by liis hearers, while his habits of study must unfit him for the details of pastoral work. The system which rewards college professors towards the end of their career by endowing them with country parishes, for the duties of which all their previous habits unfit them, and the spiritual interests of which must there fore to a large extent be sacrificed for their accommodation, could have been planned only by men who regarded the Church Establishment merely as a preserve of the State for the benefit of those from whom the Government derives political support. Such an litter disregard of adaptation in the means is a clear proof that the welfare of the Church could not have been the end.
In lookino- through the clerical list for this diocese of
O
Meath, we are struck with the absurdly low valuation of the glebe land. Glebes, it is well known, generally consist of the best land of the district ; and the rich grazing land of Meath is, with the exception of the Golden Yale of Tipperary, the best in Ireland, and brings rent varying from £’2 to £5 an acre. But in estimating the value of the glebe lands, very low figures have been adopted. For example, in the parish of Ardnurcher, the Rev. Garret Nugent enjoys a Crown living with 251 acres of glebe land, a very good estate in itself, for which the value is returned at £208. In addition to the 251 acres, he enjoys a rentcharge or stipend of £180, and he has got all this property for taking care of 130 parishioners. How glad the parish priest would be to have that income for the spiritual care of the 3,721 souls that look to him for guidance. Perhaps he thinks he ought to have it, and that the State is not just in giving it all to his neighbour, who has so little to do. The Rev. T. G. Caulfield, of Bally loughloe lias 100 acres, with an addi tional stipend of £i33. The living is in the gift of the bishop, and the incumbent has enjoyed it since 1859. This parish contains 153 souls belonging to the Establishment. This would be a comfortable berth, supposing the incumbent to have no sense of duty or responsibility, which would be an uncharitable assumption ; therefore we must infer that
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in common with many other conscientious incumbents so situated, his righteous soul must be vexed from day to day with the thought that he is not earning his income. The Rev. John Brandon, of Castlerickard, has also an easy berth, with forty acres of land, a stipend of £127, and a church which accommodates only eighty people. It is large enough, however, for the total number of Church souls committed to his charge is fifty-six. The Rev. Joseph M. Daly, of Church- town, has sixty-one acres, with a stipend of £256, for looking after ninety-three souls in a total population of 1,711. Viewing the Establishment solely in a worldly light, and setting aside all disagreeable thoughts of conscience and Christianity, the happiest man in this diocese is the Rev. Ralph Coote. The date of his ordination seems to have been beyond the reach of the diligent compiler of the “ Irish Church Directory,” who has put a blank instead of the record. He is as reserved with respect to the year of his birth as he is with respect to the date of his ordination. For although Sir Bernard Burke, whose diligence in these matters is proverbial, gives the dates when all the rest of the Cootes came into the world, he does not record the birth of the incumbent of Fercall. He does, however, record his marriage, which occurred in 1825, and it may be supposed that this interesting event was preceded by his ordination. It seems, at all events, to have heralded his promotion, which occurred two years after, allowing the happy couple time to make the Continental tour. However that may be, Mr. Coote was admitted to the diocese in 1827, thirty-nine years ago, and in that same year he jumped into the possession of a union of seven parishes, with a magnificent endowment of glebe lands, amounting to 2,805 acres, which ought to produce a revenue of £5,000 a year, though the gross income is set down at £1,468, and the net at £997. The Protestant population of this union of seven parishes is 815, of which 88 are Dissenters, the total population being 12,115. The patron of this union of Fercall is Sir Charles Coote. The cause of the seven parishes being thrown into one was obviously to make a suitable provision for the younger son
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242 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of a wealthy baronet, and in doing so it is highly probable that none of the parties concerned in this manipulation of Church property ever spent a thought on the spiritual wants of the people. It is right to remark, however, that there are five churches in the union, each of which is served by a curate, so that the whole pastoral work is done for £400 or £500 a year.
The union of Drumcree also deserves some notice. It consists of five parishes, and has a Church population of 89 persons, out of a total of 1,530. The incumbent is the Rev. Cecil Russell, who has 87 acres of glebe laud, with a stipend of £150. The Union of Duleck has 81 acres of glebe, and £133 of stipend, with a Church population of 207 persons. Gallen has 222 acres of glebe land, with £155 stipend, and a Church population of 115 out of a total of 3,113. The Rev. Robert Healy, vicar of Moate, has 138 acres of glebe land, with £212 rentclmrge or stipend, but he has a com paratively large flock, 300 souls. Generally speaking, these Meath incumbents may be said to have, on an average, an acre of fat land for every soul to which they are supposed to break the bread of life, without counting the rentcharge paid by the landlords. The Rev. Robert II. Dunne has 127 acres of glebe land, together with £314 stipend ; yet his net income is set down at £382, and there is not a single Protestant of any sort in his parish. The Rev. William Lyster, who allows blanks for the time of his ordination and his coming into the diocese, received, in 1863, from the patron, Mr. John Lyster, the parish of Killucan, with 69 acres of glebe, £804 stipend, for which the net income is given as £662, and for which he ministers to a Church population of 325, out of a total population of 6,566. The union of Kells, one of the principal towns in the diocese, has a splendid endowment — 177 acres of glebe land, which must be worth £5 an acre. The incumbent returns the gross income at £1,670, and the net income at £1,211, but he does not give the money value of the glebe land, nor the amount of the rentcharge. The incumbent is the Venerable E. A. Stopford, Archdeacon and Surrogate, whose father became
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bishop of the diocese in J 842 — two years before his son’s appointment to this valuable living. The Stopfords are one of those families to whom the Irish Church has proved a good nursing mother. They can look back to a Fellow of Trinity College and Rector of Con wall, a Bishop of Cloyne, a Bishop of Cork and Ross, and a Bishop of Meath, nourishing on. their genealogical tree ; and there are at present two archdeacons bearing that honoured name. It is remarkable that many of the best livings in the diocese of Meath are in the gift of the bishop, and that the most desirable of them are enjoyed by the bishop’s sons and sons-in-law.
The policy of making bishops of fellows of college is very doubtful. A senior fellow of Trinity College is as well off in point of position and income as any clergyman could reasonably desire to be. The scholastic habits of his life and all his associations fit him for the sphere which he occupies, and unfit him for every other, but most of all for the govern ment of a diocese. He has 110 experience of pastoral duties, and cannot sympathize with those who are engaged in them. The change which he makes late in life is like the trans - planting of an old tree, which cannot well take root in the
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new soil, and never can attach itself vitally to the surround ings of the new situation. He enters a palace in the country, becomes lord of a residence fit for a prince and his retinue, but brings to the errand baronial halls and saloons the habits
O CD
of a recluse. There, for example, at Ardbraccan, is a garden large enough to supply vegetables and fruit for the household and retainers of a feudal baron. But the new bishop is probably without any family, and is content with two or three servants. He has excellent stabling for twenty or thirty horses, with every arrangement perfect, but only two or three of the mangers are occasionally occupied. He has rich pasture land sufficient for a dairy of forty or fifty cows, but he has let the grazing to save himself trouble, and one or two cows supply all his needs. He has around his palace some of the finest tillage land in the world, but probably one small field is the utmost that he cultivates. He has no following, no local associations or attachments, and his great
R2
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
object seems to be to isolate himself as much as possible from the people that surround him. This was very nearly the position of the late accomplished and venerable Bishop of Meath, Dr. Singer. The palace is splendid; the demesne magnificent; incomparably rich and beautiful are the see lands which lie around it ; but there was no life there. All was silent and sad. The palace, with its marble walls, was shut up ; there was no living thing to be seen about the place but a care-taker, who lodged with his family in a stable loft, and the gate-keeper. They gave no indications by their appear ance and dress that they were the servants of a lord bishop worth thousands a year. The garden-walks were’ungravelled, the borders of the beds broken and neglected, the soil, naturally rich, was starved, the few fruit-trees which sur vive were literally dying of old age, and the same may be said of the timber in the demesne, which is fortunately registered, and cannot be cut down, or else we may be sure it would quickly disappear. In the memory of the oldest inhabitant no bishop has incurred the expense of planting a single tree. There is no rising generation of wood there — nothing that indicates a hope of the future — everything, on the contrary, betrays the feeling in each incumbent, “ It will do well enough for my time — after me, the deluge.” This is a faithful picture of what I saw myself when I inspected the place last year, going through the grounds, the gardens, and the out-offices, with the care-taker as my guide. The palace was shut up. I was struck, during the drive from Dublin to Ardbraccan, with the baldness and nakedness of that fine country. Scarcely a tree in some districts as far as the eye could reach ; nothing but an undulating plain of grass, reminding one of an American prairie. Even where some of the old farmsteads have been permitted by the landlords and graziers to remain, the houses are unsheltered by trees and the fields by hedges. Can Ave wonder, however that tenants- at-will do not plant trees, which would become the landlord’s property, when we see that bishops with magnificent incomes and a life-interest in their see lands, neither plant trees nor improve the property in any way whatever ? The average
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 245
life of a bishop is not very short. Since the commencement of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, there have been only twenty- four bishops in Meath, and but four bishops in this diocese in sixty-six years, giving to each a tenure of sixteen years. Many a tenant-farmer would be glad to improve on the chance of such a tenure or on a life interest. But bishops are too prudent to do anything of the kind.
The apostle Paul says that a bishop should be given to hospitality, and he has said nothing which better commends itself to our reason. But this is a text which bishops seem to forget altogether. Ardbraccan is quite in the country. There is not even a village or a hamlet in the place. But although a portion of the diocese is forty or fifty miles distant, I am assured on good clerical authority that no clergyman’s horse ever had the good fortune to smell the Bishop’s oats, or to make himself acquainted with his lord ship’s stable. When the clergy came to wait upon their apostolic diocesan, they were obliged to unyoke their vehicles outside the palace gates, and to feed their horses from nose bags. It has often been urged in defence of the Church Establishment in its present state that it is a great advantage to the country to have a resident gentleman in every parish or union of parishes. This argument applies of course with greatest force to the bishop, who, on account of his large revenues, might be expected to act the part of a resident nobleman, to be a large employer, and to make his palace the centre of great social influence, by means of liberal expenditure. I therefore made inquiries in the town of Navan, which is two and a half miles from the palace, whether that place and the surrounding country derived any benefit from the Bishop’s expenditure. The answer invari ably given was very emphatic — “ Not a shilling ! “
The palace was built by Bishop Maxwell, youngest son of the first Lord Farnham, who was translated to this see from Dromore in 1766. The stone was obtained from the lime stone quarry on the demesne, which is still a most valuable property, and is rented by the Bishop to a gentleman in Dublin by whom it is worked. The stone, which is soft at
246 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
first and easily cut, becomes hard when exposed to the weather, and the palace walls look perfectly fresh after enduring for one hundred years. The plan of the edifice and the style in which everything about it was executed were certainly worthy of a nobleman. It is said that Bishop Maxwell declared that he would erect a palace 011 such a scale of magnificence that no “ Tutor” could afford to occupy it. He remained in possession himself for thirty-two years, having died in 1798, aged seventy-live. His hope that his successor would be a man of gentle blood, who could worthily fill such a baronial residence, was very far from beiii^
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realized, for his immediate successor was Dr. O’Beirne, son of a Roman Catholic firmer in Longford, who sent him to school at St. Omer’s, in Flanders. He changed his religion, and became successively Chaplain to the British Fleet, Pri vate Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Vicar of Mohill, where his brother officiated as priest, then Bishop of Ossory, and ultimately Bishop of Meath, where he remained till. 1823. He was an able man, the author of many publications, and an excellent bishop, for during the time he presided over this diocese there were erected in it seventy-two glebe- houses and fifty-seven churches.”
* The conversion and promotion of O’Beirne would make a little romance: — “He was travelling on foot through Wales, when the day became very boisterous and rainy, and he took shelter in a poor inn on the wayside, and after ordering his dinner, which was a small bit of Welsh mutton, he went into a little sitting-room. In some time two gentlemen came in also for shelter (they were on a shooting party, and were driven in by the violence of the storm), and asked the woman of the house what she could give them for dinner. She replied that she had nothing but what was at the fire roasting, and it was ordered by a gentle man in the next room, adding in a low tone, she believed he was an Irishman ; whereupon one of the gentlemen exclaimed, ‘ Damn Paddy, he has roast mutton for dinner, while we must fast! We will take it.’ Whereupon O’Beirne walked down from his room, and asked who damned Paddy, and insisted upon getting his dinner, and added they should not have it by force, but if they would take share of it on his invitation he would freely give it, and they were heartily welcome; on which they accepted the invitation, provided he would allow them to give the wine, which they assured him was very good, notwithstanding the appearance
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 247
Quoad temporalities, the great object of a bishop is to extract as much money as possible out of his see, and to avoid any outlay that is not absolutely necessary. He sets himself on the defence against all new claims and liabilities, and perhaps even goes out of his way to repudiate his obli gations to those who helped him up to his present position, and to give the world to understand that he has been promoted solely for his merits. This is not unnatural at the age when
of the place. They all retired to the sitting-room, and the two gentlemen began conversing in French, whereupon O’Beirne interrupted them, and informed them that he understood every word the}’ uttered, and they might not wish that a third person should know what they were speaking about, and then the conversation became general, and was carried on in French, of which O’Beirne was a perfect master. They inquired of him
what were his objects in life, when he told them his history that ho was
a farmer’s son in Ireland, and his destiny was the Irish Catholic priest hood. When they were parting, one of the gentlemen asked would he take London on his way to Paris, to which he replied in the affirmative. He then gave him a card with merely the number and the street of his residence, and requested he would call there, where he would be very happy to see him. O’Bcirne walked to London, Avhich took him a con siderable time, and on arriving there did not fail to call at the place indicated by the card. When he got to the house, he thought there must be some mistake ; but nothing daunted, he rapped, and met a hall porter, to whom he presented the card, and told him how he carne by it, but supposed it was a mistake. The porter replied : ‘ Oh, no ! His Grace expected you a fortnight ago, and desired you should at once be shown in ;’ and ushered him in accordingly to the study, where His Grace the Duke of Portland introduced himself to him. He had been appointed Governor of Canada, and O’Beirne’s knowledge of the French language, and his education and general information, were matters that made him a desirable private secretary to deal with the French Canadians, and O’Beirne accepted the proposal of going out as private secretary to the Duke of Portland. It was in Canada he apostatized and became a minister of the Established Church. To the Duke of Portland O’Beirne owed his promotion in the Irish Church, first to the parish of Temple- michael, then to the see of Ossory, and finally his translation to the see of Meath, then valued at more than £8.000 per annum. He was married to a Scotch lady, a daughter of General Stuart, had one son and two daughters.” — “ The Sham Squire.” ByAV. J. Fitzpatrick, esq. J.P. The priest was a frequent visitor at the palace, and was in the habit of riding out with his nieces, the bishop’s daughters.”
248 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
bishops sometimes come into possession of their sees. After seventy, men do not like to engage in the work of renovation. Life then is precarious, encompassed with infirmities, and needing repose. The bishop is more inclined to amuse him self with his grandchildren than to undertake anything which would tax the powers that remain to him, even if he were not disabled and tormented by gout, and did not need the careful nursing of his daughters. This was for many years the condition of Dr. Singer, who lived to be an octogenarian, and resided principally in Harcourt-street, Dublin. It therefore happened in this case, as in many others, where the bishops are old and infirm, that the management of the diocese fell into the hands generally of relatives, who formed an impenetrable circle round his sacred person.
It may be doubted whether it was well for the usefulness and the fame of Dr. Singer to have been made a bishop. As a Fellow of Trinity College, and Regius Professor of Divinity, he enjoyed for many years a great and enviable prestige. He was justly regarded as the most influential leader of the Evangelical party in the Church. Indeed, he may be said to have been the principal founder of that party. He took the liveliest interest in divinity students, holding meetings with them constantly in his rooms, and labouring in every way to give them just ideas of the duties and responsibilities of the Christian ministry in Ireland, and to fit them for their proper discharge. Very many of the Evangelical clergy who became most distinguished in different parts of the country, looked up gratefully to Dr. Singer as the Gamaliel at whose feet they had sat, and from whose lips they had learned the principles which they regarded as the essence of the Gospel. This earnestness in religion was accompanied by many graceful accomplishments, and by a genial, attractive manner, as well as a tolerant spirit, which secured him hosts of friends, and made him at one time the most popular man in the Irish Church. There was great rejoicing, therefore, when he was appointed to the see of Meath. Dr. Singer was to redeem the character of the Irish Bench from the charges
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 249
of worldliness, negligence, and nepotism. He would consider only the spiritual interests of the Church in all his appoint ments. He would seek out in his diocese the most laborious and godly ministers, the most aged and worthy curates who were encumbered with the largest families, the men most capable of reviving pure and undefiled religion, of building up the waste places of Zion, and cleansing the neglected sanctuary. Meath would soon present the delightful picture of a model diocese, and show the world what the Irish Church would become when men like him were selected to fill the position of its chief pastors. But, alas for human nature ! Many of Dr. Singer’s former admirers were obliged to exclaim, “How has the fine gold become dim!”
Dr. Singer was consecrated in 1852. Three years after that his son, the Rev. P. 2&. Singer was ordained and admitted to his father’s diocese. Four years after his ordination, Mr. Singer received from his father one of the best livings in his gift. There is another living — the parish of Reynagh — in the gift of the Bishop, which is endowed with 158 acres of glebe land and £107 rentcharge or stipend, though the net value is returned at £119. We find this living in the possession of the Rev. Robert Stavely, who was son-in-law, domestic chaplain, and secretary to the Bishop, and resided at Adelaide-road, Dublin. Mr. Stavely was ordained in 1852, and in 1856, Avheii he was not five years in the ministry, the Bishop gave him this living, passing over all the curates of long standing in the diocese, for no reason in the world, except that the lucky recipient had married the Bishop’s daughter. The Rev. R. B. Baker is married to another daughter, and was one of his lordship’s chaplains, Mr. Singer, his son, and the Archdeacon of Meath occupying the same position. It does not appear whether any or what emoluments are attached to this office. Mr. Baker, it is said, passes most of his time in England.
Episcopal nepotism is not without its defenders ; and there is one text which they regard as a very precious portion of the Word of God — “ He that provideth not for his own, and especially for those of his own household, hath denied the
250 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
faith, and is worse than an infidel.” This text might be quoted in condemnation of a man who abandoned his wife and children, and cast them for support upon the union ; or a man who squandered away his income on vice, neglecting to clothe, educate, and provide for his children. A bishop who failed to give his sons a good education, fitting them for professions according to their talents, or refused to give his daughters suitable marriage portions, would justly fall under the condemnation of the apostle. The bishop may do as he pleases with his private income. “ To his own Master he standeth or fallcth ;” but the revenues of the parishes of which he is patron are not his property. In reference to them he is but a steward, a trustee, and he is bound, as an honest man, to give them only to the ministers who, by their services to the Church and their capacity to promote its interest, deserve them best. It is not as a father in the flesh, but as a “ right reverend father in God “ that he is to indulge his paternal feelings in the dispensation of his patronage ; and his children in that capacity are not his SOILS and daughters, but the clergy of his diocese, whom lie is bound to treat justly according to their merits, instead of pampering some and starving others. It is a very lame apology for nepotism — for giving away the best livings to uniledged divines, thus depriving of their due learned and laborious clergymen, men of long standing, and virtually robbing the Church of the use and benefit of its property — it is a very lame apology for this abuse of a sacred trust to allege that the bishop’s relations and pets are competent to perform the duties of their respective charges. They may go through them in a certain way ; but they have no moral right to offices to wh icli they are pushed up by favouritism over the heads of men incomparably better qualified. A stripling who has just buckled on his armour has no right to the prizes set apart as rewards for veterans who have been for long years fighting the battles of the faith, and enduring the burden and heat of the day in many a weary march.
The case of the Bishop of Meath, an infirm octogenarian,
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full of affection for his children and grandchildren, surrounded by sons and daughters, who, with their husbands, guide his feeble hands in the exercise of episcopal authority, is not singular. There have been many similar cases in the Irish Church, and hence arises a question for the grave con sideration of Government and Parliament. It is a monstrous evil that the clergy of a diocese, and the spiritual interests of a community, should be under an authority so paralyzed, misguided, and abused. The Roman Catholic Church, which teaches us so many lessons of practical wisdom, acts very differently in such matters. As soon as ever a bishop becomes incapacitated by age or infirmity for the efficient discharge of his duties, a coadjutor and successor is appointed. The old bishop is considerately allowed, to retain his position and dignity; but the active administra tion of the diocese and the chief responsibility rest with his more vigorous colleague. Surely, if the Irish Church is to be maintained, some such plan should be adopted for the superannuation of bishops, and for preventing women from becoming the rulers of our clergy.
It must be confessed that when Dr. Singer went to Meath, he only followed the example that had been set him by his predecessors in providing for his own household at the expense of the Church. Dr. Stopford particularly had left some of his fortunate offspring in possession of the best things in the diocese. The most valuable living is that of Kells, the gross income being £l,G70. This includes the value of 177 acres of glebe land, lying in the richest part of Meath. In the “ Irish Church Directory” there is a suspicious blank for the money value ; but probably it would be set down at about thirty shillings per acre, though really worth three or four pounds. As the incumbent is the author of a book on the income and requirements of the Irish Establishment, it is strange that he has not furnished to the compiler of the “ Church Directory “ the particulars of his own living, as all the other clergy in the diocese have done. In the “Directory” for 1864, however, the value of the 177 acres of glebe land is set down at £266 yearly, and the amount of
252 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the rentcharge at £885. Archdeacon Stopford was ordained in 1833. His father was appointed Bishop of Meath in 1842, in which year the son also entered the diocese, and in the year following he became possessed of its richest benefice. He was for a time Vicar-General, and he now holds the offices of Archdeacon of Meath, Rector of the union of Kells, Surrogate of the Meath Diocesan Court, and Acting- Deputy-Registrar of the same court. The multifarious duties of these various offices, together with the literary habits of the Archdeacon, necessarily prevent his paying much attention to the spiritual wants of his parishioners, who number 521 souls, and are committed to the care of a curate, whose pastoral experience may be inferred from the fact that he had been two years in holy orders. It may not be surprising under these circumstances, but it is far from creditable, that the parish church, which is large and spacious, should be in a very dirty condition, or that we should find a cracked table and a looking-glass in the chancel, which is used as a vestry. Everywhere about the church we discover tokens of negligence and decay, and altogether it seems the only public building in Kells which is uncared for both by laity and clergy. And a not unnatural result of this state of things is the fact that in summer a number of ultra- Dissenters, who repudiate the Christian ministry altogether, were busy in Kells holding meetings on Sunday afternoons in the court-house, not very far from the church, which meetings were crowded by gentry and townsfolk, who preferred the preaching of irregular evangelists from Kerry and Merrion Hall to the “ authorized “ ministrations of the Archdeacon and his curate.
Clongill, with forty members of the Established Church, and £206 per annum and a residence, is a living held by the Rev. T. A. Stopford, another son of the late Bishop, who is also Registrar of the diocese. His address is given in all the Directories as Navan, but since the 25th of June, 18G2, he has been licensed as permanent chaplain to the British residents at Rouen, in France. A full exposure of this glaring case of non-residence was given in one of the Dublin
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papers, but it produced apparently no effect. No curate for Clongill appeared in the “Church Directory” for 1862, 1863, 1864, or 1865 ; but in last year appears the name of the Rev. Thomas G. Irwin, said to have been ordained in 1865, and in that year admitted both to the diocese and the curacy ; but I am assured that this is a mistake, for Mr. Irwin was ordained in 1851, and has been curate of Clongill since 1862. It is not easy to account for mistakes of this kind. If, however, there was a faithful and efficient epis copal oversight in this diocese, there would not be so much of what looks like collusion between the privileged relations of bishops ; and either the forty Church souls of Clongill would be handed over to the care of some neighbouring minister, or the gentleman who is paid for looking after them should be compelled to reside in the parish. In truth, those sons and sons-in-law of bishops may do very nearly as they please. Who is to call them to account ? Not surely the right reverend and affectionate grandpapa, tot tering under the infirmities of his fourscore years, who knows nothing of the outer world but what he learns from
O
the ministering angels of his household, by whom he is tenderly nursed.
The church of Ardbraccan adjoins the demesne of the palace, although it is in the gift of the Crown. It is a very plain, homely sort of building, standing 011 the site of one of the most primitive of the Irish cathedrals. It contains a seat for the bishop, which is dignified with the name of a throne, though the ornament with which it is surmounted reminds one of the top of a shower-bath. The rector has fifty-three acres of glebe-land and a rentcharge of £6 1 5 a year, yet, strange to say, the net income is returned at £394. The church is made to accommodate 200 persons, and the Protestant population of the parish amounts to 267, but the attendance on Palm Sunday, though the weather was fine, was not more than sixty or seventy persons, including chil dren, all of the working classes.
Navan, one of the principal towns in the county, formerly an important borough, returning two members to Parliament,
254 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
has now a total population of 6,345. It is only twenty- three miles from the metropolis ; and though it was one of the strongholds of the Pale, the number of Protestants in the union, including three parishes, is only 189, not counting twenty-six Dissenters. Out of such a Protestant population a large congregation is not to ho expected, but to any one who is really interested in the cause of Protestantism the attendance is painfully disappointing. It consists almost exclusively of the few families of the gentry residing in the neighbourhood. The large pews rising above one another towards the wall at each side, and so deep that the wor shipper* sitting could not see one another, when I was there on a fine Sunday had for their only occupants a lady or gentleman in each corner. In some cases only two out of the four corners were thus adorned, and, in others, the pews were entirely empty. The church is neat, commodious, and cheerf;.!. Fronting the door there are two lofty scats, cor responding to each other, and covered symmetrically, one for the bishop and one for a long-departed civic functionary the “portreeve.” There is a handsome organ, which a very conspicuous inscription in painted letters reminds the wor shippers was presented to the parish by Mrs. Savage. Under the organ gallery, to the right as you enter, is another very remarkable exhibition of charity — a shelf, on which are placed, nicely arranged in a row, ten sixpenny loaves, which, as an inscription states, have been provided for the poor of the parish by the Duke of Bedford. The original donor, however, was Lord Ludlow, who directed that live shillings’ worth of bread should be provided weekly for the poor of this church. The Duke, of course, continued the grant when the estate came into his hands. The present proprietor is Earl Russell, who is spoken of as an excellent landlord. With respect to the ten loaves, it may be said that it would be difficult to devise a better plan for fulfilling the text, “The poor ye have always with you ;” but, really, even this attraction seems to fail to bring the poor to the church of Navan, for scarcely any representatives of that class, or even of the working class, were visible in the congregation. On
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the other hand, if the loaves were allotted to the Roman Catholic poor attending the immense church a few perches off, one might well exclaim, “What are they among so many T That building, which has the appearance of a vast hall sur rounded by large galleries, and capable of accommodating five or six thousand people, presents in every way the greatest possible contrast to the parish church. A similar contrast exists at Trim, Kells, Mulliiigar, Slane, Duleek, Athboy, and all the towns in the diocese. But this is too fruitful a topic to be disposed of in a paragraph.
The Rev. Dr. Brady has published “A Statistical Digest, exhibiting in a Tabular Form the present State of Endow ment and Population in the Diocese of Meath, compiled from the latest Returns of the Census and Ecclesiastical Commis sioners of Ireland,” from which I extract the following figures. The number of benefices is 105, composed of 204 parishes, containing 107 churches, and having 105 incum bents. The gross income of the see is £4,308 2s. 3</., the net, £3,664 166’. 4c?. The total gross income of the benefices is £30,717 lls. lit?., net income, £24,504 4-s. 4c£., giving an average net income per benefice of £243 7.9. 5J, If we add the tithes, disappropriated from the see, and the value of the deanery lands of Clonmacnoise (£1,686 46’. i)cZ.), with the revenue of the five suspended parishes (£475 76’.), the gross total of the ecclesiastical revenues of Meath will amount to £37,187. The total population of the Established Church for which this provision is made, is 15,809, giving 151 souls for each benefice, the Roman Catholic population being 221,553, or 2,110 souls for each benefice. The diocese con tains only 1,865 Dissenters. Without counting the bishop’s income, the endowment per head of the Church population is, gross, £1 18s. Scl ; net, £1 10s. lOd This is exclusive of 240 persons who form the Church population of fourteen impropriate parishes, in which there is no provision for the cure of souls ; and of twenty-nine persons who form the Church population of five suspended parishes; and of 151 members of the Established Church who are inmates of public institutions, whose spiritual wants are otherwise
256 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
provided for by the State. If these be added, the gross population is 16,289.*
In this diocese, as well as in others, the work of education has been grossly neglected, and trust-funds set apart for the purpose have been shamefully perverted. Alderman John Preston, of the city of Dublin, in 1688, granted 1,737 acres of land upon trusts to pay a Protestant schoolmaster at Navan, and another at Ballyroan, in the Queen’s County. These were “grammar schools,” that is, classical schools. The trust was misapplied till 1813, when the estates were vested in the Commissioners of Education, that is, when they could be got out of Chancery, where they had remained for ninety-nine years, at a cost of three or four thousand pounds. The Endowed Schools Commissioners, whose report was published in 1858, state that when they visited the Navan school they found no boarders, and but three day boys present out of five on the roll. With one exception, the boys knew less than the average of boys in National schools. And this is the result of a splendid endowment for the education of Protestant youth within two and a half miles of the palace of the Bishop of Meath, who was himself one of the Commissioners of Education ! The same report, referring to the Mullingar Diocesan Free School, remarks that the public derived no advantage whatever from the endowment, and that there had been no interference on the part of the Commissioners, although the annual returns furnished by the master indicated to them the state of the school.
One of the best endowed establishments in all Ireland is Wilson’s Hospital, near Mullingar. The estates are situated in the counties of Westmeath, Longford, Kildare, and Dub lin, and consist of 5,881 acres, yielding a rental of £3,639, which is £400 a year less than the Ordnance valuation. The report of this institution was favourable.
* “Remarks on the Irish Church Temporalities, &c.,” by the Rev. W. M. Brady, D.D.
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CHAPTER XIII.
THE first bishop we meet in travelling southward from Dublin is the Bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, who resides at his palace in Kilkenny — Ossory being the name of a petty principality in the olden times. The diocese includes nearly the whole of the county of Kilkenny, one barony of the Queen’s county, and part of the King’s county, em bracing an area of over 600,400 statute acres. The total number of benefices of all sorts is sixty-seven. Ferns in cludes nearly the whole of the county of Wexford and a portion of the county of “Wicklow, and is about the same extent as Ossory. It has sixty-four benefices. The third diocese in this union of bishoprics is Leighlin, which in cludes nearly the whole of the county of Carlow, a consider able portion of the Queen’s county, and of the county of Wicklow, and some portion of the county Kilkenny, with an area of 524,760 acres. The number of benefices is thirty- seven.
This prelate, then, rules over an immense tract of country, which is about the best inhabited and best cultivated portion of the island, having an industrious, orderly, and well- conditioned population, so far, at least, as the country parts are concerned. Including sixty-five curates, he has subject to his authority 229 clergymen, having at his disposal 103 livings to distribute amongst them as vacancies occur. His own income is <£4,630 gross, and £3,867 net, with a very fine palace adjoining his cathedral in the town of Kilkenny, and some acres of see land. The gentleman who occupies this enviable position is the Right Rev. James Thomas O’Brien, D.D., who was born in 1794, and is consequently now seventy-three years of age. He graduated in the Dub lin University in the year 1815, and was elected Fellow in 1820, having, it is said, like some other distinguished men
S
258 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
in the Church, become a Protestant during his undergraduate course. He was appointed to the office of Archbishop King’s Lecturer in Divinity in 18.83. Three years later he married Ellen, daughter of the late Chief Justice Pennefather, and after the lapse of six years more he became bishop of this united diocese, having stepped into it from the Deanery of Cork, both the appointments occurring in the year 1842. His immediate predecessor was Dr. Fowler, who, on the death of Dr. Elrington in 1835, became Bishop also of Ferns and Leighlin under the Church Temporalities Act, by which the see of Ferns was abolished. In the year 1(H)0 it so happened that Robert Grove, a native of Kent, was promoted to the see of Ferns, and as the neighbouring see of Leighlin had been vacant for some time, he got that see into the bargain, and they have boon united ever since. Perhaps in con sequence of the disturbed state of the country, or for the sake of economy, he resolved to go to his diocese by sea, and was unfortunately lost, with all his family, in the Bay of Dublin.
Bishop O’Brien has the reputation of being one of the ablest men on the Irish Bench. He is understood to be a diligent student and a deep thinker ; yet the only work of any importance he has produced dining his long life of lettered ease is his book on Justification,* which was so highly esteemed that for many years it could not be had except at an exorbitant price. It will naturally be asked why the author did not meet the demand by publishing a new edition. The answer given by his friends and admirers is that he is constitutionally very indolent. At length, how ever, he roused himself so far as to publish a new edition, which has come out within the last year or so. He is not popular among his clergy, as his manners are said to be cold and distant, and they are often annoyed by the way in which he neglects their communications. They are for the most part “Evangelicals” — good Churchmen so far as the
* “ An Attempt to Explain and Establish the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Only, in Ten Sermons upon the Nature and Effects of Faith.” Preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, by J. T. O’Brien, D.D.
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Church recognises evangelical doctrines ; beyond that their admiration and cordial reverence seldom extend. But what ever their particular views may be, the bishop has every thing his own way. They complain that he is haughty and stern to a most painful degree, and that he will know none of them intimately, with the exception of those who happen to be his own relations ; yet he manages somehow to get them all to his own way of thinking, or rather, per haps, to adopt his well-known ideas, especially his ruling idea 011 Church education. He has been for many years the recognised champion of the Church Education Society, in opposition to the National system adopted by the Legislature and the Government. This is one of the anomalies of the present system of Church and State. Here is a prelate whom the Sovereign has made ruler over the clergy of three dioceses, that he might aid in the work of Christian civili zation. He derives all his powers and jurisdiction from the Crown and the Legislature ; he has got revenues and a place fit to maintain a lordly dignity, and when the State estab lished a system of National education on principles that had been recommended by nearly all the bishops, and which has been supported by the leaders of every political party for thirty years — this State bishop has felt it to be his duty to labour for twenty years in disparaging, discrediting, de nouncing, and resisting that system, not only in his charges to the clergy, but in the exercise of his very extensive patronage. This system of opposition Bishop O’Brien has maintained with unabated pertinacity for twenty years, and, to all appearance, he will maintain it to the end. Complaints have been made against the Government for not promoting men of this spirit, but if they did more to provoke such complaints than they have done, they would better consult the freedom of the clergy as well as the material and spiritual interests of the laity. It is conceivable that there would be in the diocese of Ferns, for example, few clergy men who could not conscientiously accept aid from the State funds for the support of their parochial schools, especially as, owing to the unhappy religious antipathies that have sur-
S2
260 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
vived iii the county Wexford ever since the Rebellion of 1798, it is not likely they would have any practical diffi culties in the matter of Scriptural instruction by the intrusion of Roman Catholic children. But with the exception of a dignitary lately appointed by the Crown, I learn that there is but one clergyman in the diocese who receives aid from the National Board ; and this exception is accounted for by the fact that the clergyman is related to the bishop. Although his lordship was seventy-two years of age, he travelled from Kilkenny to Dublin to attend the annual meeting of the Church Education Society held on the llth of April, 18(ju, ami occupied more than half the time allotted to the proceedings in an elaborate reply to the primary charge of the Archbishop of Dublin, whose suffragan he is. That amiable prelate had ventured to express an opinion that the Irish clergy had acted unwisely at first in not accepting the funds set apart by the State for popular education in I re land. But this incidental expression of an opinion seemed, indi rectly at least, to impugn the infallibility of his lordship of Ossory, who had been contending for twenty years that it was unlawful in the sip’ht of God for any clergyman to
O */ Oft/
place liis schools in connexion with the National Board, the rules of which he could not possibly observe without a vio lation of conscience. The Apostle Paul says of a Christian man acting according to his own convictions in matters not essential to salvation — “ To his own master he standeth or falleth ; who art thou that judgest another’s servant V But the Bishop of Ossory, it seems, assumed the responsi bility of taking the Divine Master’s place, and judging for his clergy in this matter of National education ; nor did he hesitate to denounce as unprincipled and time-serving his brethren on the Irish Bench who presumed to differ with him on the subject. Indeed few men are more intolerant than he of any difference of opinion, whatever may be the question at issue ; and the most remarkable proofs of in dustry and ability he has ever exhibited have been in criticising and satirizing opponents. It was difficult to do this in the case of Archbishop Trench, and his Grace might
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well have hoped to escape any sort of censure for having uttered the following very mild judgment : —
“ I can enter fully into the feeling of the clergy of Ireland, when in 1832 the whole education of the people was sud denly taken out of their hands ; but, while I can quite understand their inability at once to realize and adapt them selves to the new condition of things in which their part was so limited and so subordinate, I ought not, at the same time, to shrink from saying that, so far as I can judge, they ought to have accepted the assistance of the State.”
Yet this is interpreted into a “serious charge” against the clergy, and the Bishop of Ossory set to work, and after a month’s cogitation constructed an elaborate argument to convict the Archbishop of “ sin.” This argument was de livered 011 the platform of the society at the great meeting in the Rotunda, in presence of two or three thousands of the laity, and hundreds of the clergy from all parts of the country, winding up as follows : —
“ He says expressly that lie would have accepted the assistance of the State on the terms on which it was ottered, and that he ‘would not have accounted that a sin.’ Now, it is unnecessary to prove by words that what he would account a sin he would not do. But the real question be tween us is this : — He thinks the clergy might have accepted tho aid of the State in the conduct of their schools, upon the conditions on which it was offered, without committing a sin. We think that we could not do so without committing a sin. Not a sin in the narrow sense of its being a violation of a positive command or a specific prohibition, but in the wider, and, as I believe, truer sense of the word, in which every departure from the will of God, every known vio lation and neglect of duty, and every shortcoming on our parts, is a sin.”
Again, he said, in reference to the clergy : — “ When they had once deliberately determined, in the present or in any -such like case, which it was the will of God that they should do, he did not say that they should never reconsider the grounds on which they had come to that conclusion ; but
262 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
he did say that they should be very slow to engage in such a reconsideration of the circumstances which made it de sirable that they should come to an opposite conclusion. And if they found reason to suspect that they were mis taken, and then to see clearly that they were mistaken — if that were the result of their second inquiiy, were there not good grounds to fear that it might be but an answer given in God’s displeasure, and that, as in the case of Balaam of old, what seemed to them to be an expression of His will was but an answer given to them in His anger to act upon their own ?”
Dr. O’Brien having thus proved to his own satisfaction that his Archbishop was a deliberate sinner, and that if any of his own clergy, on prayerful reconsideration, had, like the late Lord Primate, changed their minds as to the lawfulness of receiving aid from the State for the support of their perishing schools, they should be regarded as so many Balaams, blinded by God in his anger, we need not be sur prised that one of the most ardent of his disciples, the Earl of Clancarty, who occupied the chair, took upon him to de nounce “the apostacy of the Government in deserting the true principle of education” : —
“ But this I do know (lie said), that a greater outrage can hardly be imposed on the Protestant community and the ministers of the Gospel in this country, than to ask them to carry out a system of education to which they were strongly opposed — for the benefit of their flocks, and of all the young children of their parishes who look up to them for instruction arid guidance, to ask them to become patrons and ministers of schools in which they are not to name Christ to their children. That, I say, is a great outrage, both on society and the Establishment.”
Referring to the National Board of Education, of which the Bishop of Deny is a member, and to which Archbishop Whately lent all the energies of his great mind for more than twenty years, Lord Clancarty said : —
“ But, intrusted with the education of the nation, and in trusted with unlimited resources for carrying it out, had
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they ever asked God’s blessing upon such a work ? Did they ever do so ? No, they did not. I was sitting 011 a committee myself, and I then had it in evidence that the National Board never once bent knee in prayer for that purpose ; and although the education of a nation can never be carried out in defiance of God, and in disregard of the blessings witli which he would countenance such a work, yet such is the condition in which that unhappy board have carried on their work. They have never asked God’s blessing on the system of education which they pursue, the principle of which is elimination of His Word from the united education that is to be given in Ireland.”
When we find bishops and noblemen indulging in so much intolerance and uncharitableness towards men who are at least their equals, many of them their superiors in every attribute, moral and intellectual, that commands respect, we may easily understand that a controversy em bittered by such a spirit, and persisted in for thirty years, must have had a very unhappy effect upon both the clergy and the laity, generating an unreasoning fanaticism, for which the Bishop of Ossory must be held mainly responsible, and which naturally exhibits its greatest virulence in the dioceses over which he lias control. Perhaps it is owing to this that he has so few scholarly or distinguished men among his clergy. No man, indeed, who loves freedom would wish to remain under the heavy pressure of Bishop O’Brien’s authority, with whom to claim the right to differ is tantamount to claiming the right to sin. Hence it has been remarked that, although his clergy are generally good men and work their parishes well, yet they agree with the Church chiefly because the Church agrees with the bishop. But when a bishop is so exacting as Dr. O’Brien, he should himself be very near perfection. His opinion, indeed, ought to have great weight, for it is the result of slow and careful study, guarded and qualified with all manner of cautions on this side and on that, but unfortunately it is so long under deliberation, that when it comes it is generally too late to be of service. His charge on the “ Essays and Reviews,” a
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masterly production, did not make its appearance till the interest in the subject was gone, and the volume of “ Essays and Reviews” was almost forgotten upon the book-shelves of the most learned of the clergy, thrown into the shade by the more daring scepticism of Colenso. The same tardiness, the same inveterate habit of procrastination, is apparent in giving away livings, which, it is said, is sometimes riot done till within a few hours of the expiration of the six months allowed by law for each vacancy. It is a fact that from three to four months usually elapse before he can make up his mind as to the candidate he should promote, and it often happens that he lias three vacant livings on his hands at the same time. His lordship’s admirers, as a matter of course, applaud this hesitancy as a proof of his dee}) anxiety with respect to the selection, and they add also that it evinces great kindness, inasmuch as it enables the new incumbent to have a little fund accumulated for the charge on the glebe- house and the expenses of removing. This may be very good for the incumbent, but it is very bad for the parish, which must be dependent for supplies upon some good-natured, unattached clergyman, who has property of his own, of which class there is one gentleman in the northern part of the diocese of Ferns, who is continually on foot, stopping the gaps which the dilatory bishop leaves open.
There are, however, those who do not take so charitable a view of these delays, and who think that they are made instrumental, whether intentionally or not, in augmenting and intensifying the bishop’s power to an enormous extent. It is quite possible that this may be done conscien tiously, and, no doubt, it is so in the present case. It is not from pure love of power for its own sake that ecclesias tics who have been most successful in grasping it have cultivated the arts of spiritual despotism. They persuade themselves that it is, above all things, most conducive to the glory of God and the good of the Church that their self-will should prevail everywhere and always, and, there fore, that every antagonist to their policy is, to all intents and purposes, a sinner, a heretic, or an anti-Christ. The
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great argument which Bishop O’Brien has incessantly pressed against the Government system of education is that the clergy should be at liberty to do what they believe to be their duty to God in the management of their schools, with out being bound by rules imposed for the protection of the consciences of Roman Catholic parents and children. But he monopolizes to himself this liberty of acting according to conscience, and absolutely denies it to the clergy for whom he professes to plead ; for should any of them dare to assert it, he is pointed at as an unprincipled sinner, like the prophet Baalam, whom an angry God has visited with judicial blind ness, forerunning his destruction. If the clergy who feel aggrieved and oppressed by an authority so inconsistent with the genius of Protestantism, are asked why they sub mit in silence, and how, in a free country, such an iron rule can be enforced, they will point to the bishop’s system of patronage. He has an immense number of livings to bestow, and most of them have passed through his hands during the last twenty years ; everyone of them has been expected anxiously by, perhaps, half a score curates, each having a circle of relations and friends, many of whom, perhaps, earnestly petitioned for the appointment, and the ladies of the expectant curate’s family are not, perhaps, the least im portunate in their solicitations on such occasions. They all know what his lordship requires in the matter of education, and what class of men he delights to honour and promote, The consequence is that protestations and promises are made, and solemn pledges given, which bind candidates and re cipients alike, if not to think as the patron thinks, at least to speak as the patron speaks 011 the subject, which is the great dominating idea of his mind. It may seem a matter of astonishment that any Christian bishop could take delight in protracting for four, five, or six months, the anxious sus pense, the earnest pleading, the importunate applications of perhaps thirty clerical circles of this kind, for as I have said there are generally three livings vacant at a time, for each of which we have fairly assumed there are ten candidates, many of whom have to support families on £75 a year.
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One of them, in a letter to the Dublin Daily Express, states as an excuse for preaching in a white surplice, which is sup plied, and even washed, by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, that so far from being able to furnish himself with a black gown for the pulpit, he cannot afford to purchase a silk dress for his wife. To a minister so situated, and obliged to main tain a social position as a gentleman, an addition of £100, or even £50 income, with a dwelling-house, and twenty or thirty acres of land rent free for life, with the rank of rector, must be an object of vital importance. Besides, he escapes the precarious position of dependence upon a rector who may be kind and brotherly, but is more likely to be capri cious, exacting, and supercilious. In the whole range of society under the British constitution there are no two functionaries so irresponsible, so completely unchecked, by law or public opinion in the exercise of their power, as a bishop and a rector in the Established Church of Ireland. From habit the laity are passive, and if any of them should presume to interfere as to the doings of either bishop or clergy they are generally “snubbed.” It seems to be a point of honour, if not a matter of principle, with our ecclesias tical rulers to stamp out any spark of independence that may show itself amongst the laity. However that may be, it is something like cruelty to keep livings thus suspended for months before the eyes of so many anxious expectants ; and the evil is not mitigated by the fact that when at last the parishes are given away they are received very often by clergymen who have property of their own, on the plea that the livings are small, and that the man of independent means will be able to do most good. The disappointed curates, whom Providence has not thus qualified for pro motion, are consoled perhaps by the promise of a better benefice when other vacancies occur. It would be a curious inquiry to try to ascertain the state of mind of a bishop subject to this perpetual process of receiving petitions, and disappointing expectants, held for months or years in a state of painful suspense. To some minds the thing would be utterly intolerable, like visiting the starving poor in their
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garrets and cellars without the power of complying with their petitions for relief, or the still more touching appeals of their emaciated looks. But we can conceive that to other minds the process gives the sort of excitement which an enthusiastic angler feels when he sees a number of salmon and trout playing around his bait, which he dangles, taiita- lizingly, in order to prolong the sport.
It has been justly remarked that the county of Wexford, which the diocese of Ferns embraces, is classic ground to the readers of Irish history. On every hand are to be seen those strongholds of other days, built by the first English adven turers to defend themselves against the sudden and impetuous attacks of the Irish chieftains. It is surprising how strong and sound some of them appear after the elemental battles of seven centuries. The numerous remains of ecclesiastical and military structures, however, are now fast disappearing. The baronies of Forth and Bargie, lying along the coast south of the town of Wexford, are particularly interesting. They were in old times called emphatically “the English baronies.” They were granted, in 11 09, by King Dennod M’Murrough to Constable Hervey de Moiitmoreiicy, who cleared the district of the old natives and planted it thoroughly with settlers from England, drawn partly from Pembrokeshire and Somersetshire. The language spoken by their descend ants till a very recent period was the Somersetshire dialect of the Anglo-Saxon, modified by a perceptible admixture of Welsh. Down to the present generation they had pre served themselves in a separate community, quite a peculiar people in language, manners, and social habits, and especially in their industry, thrift, order, and comfort. “ The people of these baronies,” wrote General Valency, “ live well, are industrious, cleanly, and of good morals. The poorest farmer eats meat twice a week ; and the table of the wealthy farmer is daily covered with beef, mutton, or fowl. The beverage is home-brewed ale and beer of an excellent flavour and colour. The houses of the poorest are well built and thatched ; all have outhouses for cattle, fowls, carts, or cars. The population are well clothed, strong, and laborious,”
268 IRELAND AX!) HER CHURCHES.
This is a description of the people as they appeared more than one hundred years ago. Mr. and Mrs. Hall, who knew them well, remark that the various wars, under the reigns of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and James II., appear to have affected only the chiefs or head men of these baronies, and to have left the humbler classes undisturbed. Yet, had it not been for the numerous castles, the ruins of which form so remark able a feature in the landscapes, they would probably have been exterminated by the native Irish. “ Over a surface of about forty thousand acres, there are still standing the re mains of fifty-nine such buildings, and the sites of many more can still be pointed out. The walls of solid masonry were equally secure against the arrows and the javelins of the foe, and the effects of tire. A plentiful supply of pure water was never wanting where a castle was erected; and from the warder’s watch-tower on the summit, two at least, and often six or more castles were in sight. The beacon fire, or other signal raised on one, spread the alarm in. a short time over the country.” Of the county in general, they remark, it is in one respect highly privileged; few of its landed proprietors being absentees. “ There are no huge estates over which several agents must necessarily be placed ; and, as very few of its gentry leave involved properties, it follows as a matter of course that the tenants are in easy circumstances, and are neither rack-rented nor pressed for sudden payments. A list of the good landlords of the county of Wexford would fill several pages. Many of them have successfully laboured to introduce improvements among the people.” In 1831 the population of the county was 182,713, in 1851 it was some thing less, and in 1801 it was reduced to about 144,000. Wexford is certainly a model count}’. It is chieHy agricul tural, like all other counties out of Ulster ; but its condition shows that with proper relations between landlord and tenant, encouraging industrious habits, an agricultural popu lation may be comfortable and prosperous. The farmer class of Wexford seem to be in a more natural and healthy condition than anywhere else in Ireland. They have passed through the crisis brought on by famine and free-trade
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 269
manfully, preserving their stock, paying their rents, and keeping up a system of cultivation, mixing tillage with oTazino- in such a way as to excite the admiration of travel-
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lers. I have seen more cattle and sheep of good breed and in good condition — more meadows and cornfields, and green crops in a day’s journey in the county of Wexford than in ten counties in other parts of the island. Here, then, is a population that seems naturally fitted in a pre-eminent degree for the reception of Protestantism — industrious, in telligent, self-reliant, independent in circumstances, and with a much larger admixture of English blood than the population of any other district in the country. Yet, strange to say, there is no county in Ireland whose population more firmly withstood the advance of the Reformation, or when roused by oppression fought so desperately against English con nexion. Nowhere at the present day is the antipathy greater between Protestants and Catholics, or the devotion of the latter to the Church of Rome move intense. The baronies of Forth and Bargic produce a greater number of priests than whole counties in other parts of the island; and Wexford men are amongst the ablest and most energetic mei i ibers of the Roman Cathol ic hierarchy. The total number of Protestants in the county, according to the census of 1861, is 12,759, and the total number of Roman Catholics 130,103, showing that the latter are more than ten to one. This is a result different from what might have been expected in a county having so little Celtic blood, and with a numerous bodv of Protestant landlords. There is only one way of accounting for it; the Established clergy in past times must have grossly neglected their duties.
The Church has been compared in prophetic language to “an army with banners;” and the idea of the “Church militant” has been a favourite one with divines in all ages. The figure is not inappropriate, because the Church has been organized to war against the evils that are in the world, to pull down the strongholds of Satan, and to liberate his slaves. The war has been successful wherever it has been waged in the apostolic spirit, and with apostolic weapons, which are
270 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
not carnal but spiritual, the word carnal meaning here poli tical or secular. It is useless now to speculate as to the amount of success which might have attended the Reformed Church in this country in pulling down the strongholds of the Church of Rome if she had acted on the apostolic method, repudiated temporalities, and relied entirely upon the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Unfortunately, she has appeared to the native population as a body armed with the weapons of tills world, and under this great moral disadvantage she has too often fought as if beating the air, and has been terrible only in smiting with the sword of the State. The State, however, lias ceased to render this fatal aid, and it is necessary now, more than ever, if she is to hold her ground, to gird 011 her Christian armour, and to depend on the might which comes from above. As she could not beat Home by Parliamentary po\ver, or royal favour, or worldly grandeur, neither can she beat Rome by ritualism, ecclesiastical costume, or ceremonial pomp. In all such efforts, however imposing, she must appear to the Arotaries of Rome a poor copyist, a mere histrionic performer, a dwarf imitating a giant. It is true that each bishop might appear in procession with a- goodly array of deans, archdeacons, pre centors, prebendaries, choristers, &c. ; but, unfortunately, a learned dean at the Belfast Conference did not hesitate to call some of those dignities “ shams,” and the Archbishop of Dublin, looking at the Irish Church with a fresh English eye, which discerned the signs of coming storms, compared the number of Irish Church dignities to over-crowded sails, in which the winds might play perilously.
If we might follow up these similes in the case of Ossory and Ferns, we should find that the Bishop could command as ample an array of dignitaries as any of his brethren. The diocese of Ossory would furnish a dean, a precentor, a chan cellor, a treasurer, an archdeacon, some half-score prebendaries, three or four vicars-choral, and a number of rural deans. Ferns would furnish a dean, a precentor, a chancellor, a treasurer, an archdeacon, and a long train of prebendaries and rural deans. Leighlin also would give its contingent, a
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS.
271
dean, a precentor, a treasurer, an archdeacon, with a number of prebendaries and rural deans; altogether, the number of these dignitaries in the united diocese is over sixty. Is Bishop O’Brien high priest ? Then he can move in pro cession at the head of five dozen cathedral officials, who, clothed in gorgeous robes of varied tints, would form a grand and imposing train of titled ecclesiastics, which might well excuse a proud prelate for magnifying his office. Is Bishop O’Brien a general ? Then he is surrounded by a magnificent staff of officers, large enough to command one of the Pope’s best armies. Is Bishop O’Brien the captain of a ship ? Then, though the freight of souls is small, he spreads out to the breeze more than sixty fluttering sails — a beautiful sight, when reflecting the bright sunbeams on a summer’s day, while the zephyrs are playing softly among the streamers from the masthead.
‘• And proudly riding o’er the azure realm, In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes.”
But what if the storm should come ? What if the “ grim repose” of national discontent should break forth into a hurricane ? In that case, every one knows an excess of canvass with light freight would be very dangerous.
A return furnished by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland by order of the House of Commons, and printed in 1864, gives us the gross and net revenue of the dignities in each diocese. The following are the figures for these dioceses, omitting shillings and pence: —
I. — FERNS.
Gross.
Net.
Gross.
Net.
Deanery,
. £726
£504
Prebends— 4th,
. £498
£310
Precentorship,
. 909
550
55
5th,
. 520
330
Chancellorship,
. 747
571
55
6th,
. 517
318
Treasurership,
. 635
419
55
7th,
. 289
183
Archdeaconry,
. 595
324
55
8th,
. 506
272
Prebends — i st,
. 158
142
55
9th,
. 504
337
2nd,
. 257
236

3rd,
. 279
259
£4,746
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
II. — LEIGIILIN.
III. OSSORY.
Gross.
Net.
Gross.
Net.
Deanery, .
.£1,863
£],195
Deanery,
. £331
£293
Chancellorship,
. 427
359
Precentorship, Treasurership,
. 178 . 171
16G 133
Treasurer ship,
Archdeaconry,
151
492
143
309
Archdeaconry,
. 242
195
Prebends — 1st,
283
152
Prebends — 1st,
. 254
229
„ 2nd,
. 771
673
„ 2nd.
. 268
266
„ 3rd,
213
203
3rd,
. 301
294
,, 4th,
141
126
„ 4th,
. 434
277
5th,
. 474
362
6th,
. 401
307
,£1,852 i
£3,829
It is true that most of these dignitaries are incumbents of parishes, and have cure of souls ; 1>ut lucre is a sum total of £10,427 of public money, over which the State exercises its control, devoted to the support of the “ dignities “ that should surround the Bishop of Ossory. It is true that they formerly were the appurtenances of three bishops, but, as they were mere appurtenances or appendages, they had no right to survive the functionary to whom they belonged. The Deans and Chapters of Ferns and Lcighliii had no right to get under the wings of Ossory, like two clutches of mother less chickens getting under one hen already engaged in sheltering her OAVII progeny. The Dean of Ferns has declared publicly that he considers his dignity a “ sham,” and states that the only act he ever did in virtue of his office was to apply an old rusty seal to some document in a single instance. The oidy signs of “ dignity “ which the public can see about these titular functionaries are the straight collars of their coats and vests, their knee-breeches and leggings, and the ornament which Cobbett irreverently called a fireshovcl hat. These marks of distinction entitle them to a certain precedence in court ceremonials, and they are generally placed on the list of viceregal chaplains, indi cating also that they are open to an episcopal appointment.
I went to Ferns on Good Friday last, hoping to find there at least the shadows of the dean and chapter, and something that deserved the name of a cathedral. But the building
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 273
dignified with, that name is a small barn-like structure, one of the ordinary country churches, with the usual heavy square tower. The bishop’s “ throne “ is an elevated pew, now used as a reading-desk. The “ stalls “ of the dean and chapter are small seats in two dark corner pews at the bottom of the church, under the gallery, and over each, in faded letters on the mouldy wall, is the title of the dignitary to whom it belongs. The dignitaries were screened from vulgar eyes by curtains, which became a useless piece of furniture when their glory had departed, and so the rector has very properly turned them to account as window-blinds to keep the glare of the sun off the pulpit during divine service. The congregation on this great holiday was a mere handful, perhaps twenty persons. The rector is the Rev. Robert Fishbourne, an able and faithful minister, who had been ordained in that same church forty years ago, and after thirty years’ labour in the diocese was promoted to this living by the present bishop with extraordinary and credit able promptness. He very kindly gave me information concerning the church, showed me the ecclesiastical ruins, and conducted me through the palace grounds. I observed to him that I thought the church looked very dingy and damp, and expressed surprise that it was not kept in better order. He assured me that damp was not the cause of the dingiiiess, that, 011 the contrary, it is remarkably dry, but that it has not been cleaned or painted for many years, certainly not during the ten years that he has been there, and he does not know how long besides. “ The Ecclesiastical Commissioners,” he said, “ are very careful about the painting of the outside work, but will do nothing of the sort inside, unless a considerable portion of the cost is paid by the parishioners. I have spoken to my people on the subject, but as they made a handsome collection to present with an address to one of my curates, who, after six years’ stay, left us last November, and did the same last January for a second, who had been here four years, and as they since subscribed to purchase a new harmonium, I could not just now, nor for some time, call on them for another collection
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274 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
to paint the church. And as the Commissioners are con sidered to possess ample funds, many persons make objec tions to giving subscriptions for church purposes.”
There it is. The habit of relying upon the State extin guishes public spirit among the people. They are content to sit in a dismal, dirty, dingy church for ten or twenty years, rather than put their hands in their pockets to meet the trifling expense of keeping it in proper order and making it comfortable and cheerful, because there are funds in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Yet I do not see why the Commissioners should blame them for this apathy, since they have undertaken themselves to supply all the necessaries of the church, not only giving the minister his surplice gratis, but actually washing it for him into the bargain. But eATeii this state of things is better than the old vestry system, under which the parish church was converted into a bear-garden every Easter Monday about the
o J «/
vestry-rate, against which the Eoman Catholic ratepayers uproariously contended with the rector and his friends, protesting that they ought not to be compelled to pay for the sweeping of the church, the washing of the surplice, and even for the bread and wine used in the sacrament, which was an outrage upon their consciences.
It has been said that Ireland is a land of anomalies, but they are not as numerous now as they were in former times. The Roman Catholic peasantry have such reverence for holy places, that they will devoutly kiss the ancient monuments, and carry away portions of the sacred earth where the saints were buried. Yet I have seen some of these ancient burial grounds without fences, and so completely unprotected that the pigs went rooting among the graves and monuments, while the bones of the dead were cropping up from the soil. I have seen within the better protected precincts of a famous old abbey heaps of bleached skulls piled up against the ruined walls like cannon balls at Woolwich. The Reformers had such a love for antiquity, that without reference to population or any of the requirements of the existing generation, they placed their bishops and deans and chapters where they
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 275
had been placed by the founders of the sees hundreds of years before, though what was then a considerable town and a royal residence had become a poor village. Yet from the Reformation down to a very late period not the slightest care was taken to preserve the most interesting ecclesiastical monuments and historical records. Thus, for example, the parochial records of Dunshaughlin — once a bishopric — which had been complete for more than three hundred years, and had been removed to the residence of an incumbent for safe keeping, were, on his death, sold to a grocer in the village for waste paper and waste parchment, and so destroyed. The ruins of the most beautiful buildings of old times fared no better. The case of the abbey and abbey church of Ferns is a striking example. Both stood within the Bishop’s demesne, immediately adjoining the modern church. They were amono* the most interesting historic remains in Ireland.
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Ferns, the “ stately city,” was once the capital of the king dom of Leinster. The magnificent castle, the only remaining tower of which commands a view of nearly the whole county, is a more modern structure, erected by Strongbow; but it was very much damaged in the course of ages, during the conflicts between contending races and creeds. The abbey and its beautiful church shared the same fate. The ruins now consist merely of two sides of a cloister, or a small chapel with some windows, ornamented with elaborate sculpture, and a very interesting round tower or steeple. These ruins are the remains of an Augustiiiian monastery, founded by King Dermot M’Murragh. Though the Crom- wellian troops made sad havoc of it, the portion they spared might have been better preserved. But year after year the ruins grew less and less, the materials disappearing under the eyes of the bishops. It could scarcely be expected that Englishmen like Thomas Ram, George Andrews, Robert Price, Richard Boyle, Narcissus Marsh, Josiah Hart, John Hoadley, William Cottrell, Robert Downs, John Garnett, Thomas Salmon, Charles Jackson, and others from the same favoured country, would take much interest in mere Irish antiquities. What did they care about St. Edan or St.
T 2
276 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Mogue, by whom the cathedral was founded, or any of the abbots, his successors 1 The monument of St. Mogue, however, was dug up with some other relics of the past. He is represented lying 011 his back, with a mitre on his head, and a cross on his breast. When the church was repaired in 181 7, the tomb of this ancient prelate was enclosed in a recess in the wall adjoining the pulpit, and the following inscription was placed over it : — “ Under this monument are interred the remains of St. Edan, commonly called St. Mogue, the founder of this cathedral, and first Bishop of Ferns. He discharged the duties of the pastoral office with piety and Christian zeal for the space of fifty years, and died at an advanced age, January 31, A.r>. 032.” This monument is considered very sacred by the Roman Catholics, who believe it to be invested with miraculous power. They conse quently come from great distances, and stealing into the church whenever they find the doors open, kiss it as an infallible cure for toothache. Clearly, then, this monument is not in its proper place. It ought to be either given up to the Roman Catholic bishop or sent to a museum.
The episcopal palace was first erected in 1030 by Bishop Ram, an able and active prelate, who recovered some por tions of the alienated property, and founded a family with a fine estate, established at Gorey, in the county Wexford. It was this prelate who, in reply to queries directed by King James I., described the methods he had adopted for converting the natives. First, he had “ carried himself” in a mild and gentle manner, referring the severity of correction unto the judges of this land in their circuits. Secondly, when mild methods failed, he proceeded to excommunication, and ultimately he adopted the stronger methods, which required the aid of sheriffs. When the recusants were brought before him in custody, he first endeavoured to convince them by persuasions and reasons, together with their apparent and present danger, hoping to make them relent. But himself prevailing nothing with them, he entreated their landlord, Sir Henry Wallopp, to try what he could do with them, but all in vain. Finally, he had the offenders brought singly to
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 277
him, and asked them to give security that they would attend the curate’s house twice or thrice a week to have the Church Service read to them in private. “ But,” said he, “ they jumped all in one answer, as if they had known beforehand what offer I would tender unto them, and had been cate chized by some priest what answer to make — viz., that they were resolved to live and die in that religion, and that they knew they must be imprisoned at length, and therefore (said they) as good now as hereafter.” It is a curious fact that the present representative of the Ram family, with his wife, has become a convert to the Church of Rome — prepared for that course, probably, by the aesthetic charms of Roman worship on the Continent, and partly driven to it, it is said, by the repulsive intolerance of the Protestant clergy and people of his own pariah. Bishop Ram ruled the diocese for a quarter of a century. He was at an advanced age when he built the palace of Ferns, and he is said to have placed over the portal the following inscription : —
“ This house Ram built for his succeeding brothers. Thus sheep bear wool — not for themselves, but others.”
The present structure, however, was erected by Bishop Cleaver, who was translated to this see in 1789. During the Rebellion of 1708 it was seriously damaged and plun dered by the rebels, his library and property of all kinds being destroyed, though he himself escaped personal violence. He was succeeded by the Honorable Percy Jocelyn, son of Lord Roden, then by Lord Totenham Loftus, both of whom were successively translated to Clogher. As these prelates belonged to noble families their expenditure was of great importance to the village, which is inhabited almost entirely by poor people.
The last of the Bishops of Ferns was Dr. Ellington, who entered Trinity College as a sizar, with nothing to depend upon but his talents and industry, and won his way first to a scholarship, then a fellowship, and finally to the office of Provost, which placed him at the head of the University. Having been ten years Bishop of Limerick, he was translated
278 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
to the see of Ferns in 1822, and held it till his death in 1835. He is still gratefully remembered at Ferns by Roman Catholics as well as Protestants. Eminently learned, he was also zealous and active in. the cause of religion, and did not shrink from encountering the late Bishop Doyle in defence of the Establishment. And though he had spent so much of his life in College he lived in a manner becoming his condition, giving employment, circulating money, and taking an interest in the poor people around him. A monument was erected in. the cathedral by his clergy “to testify their admiration of his character as a bishop of the Church, of Christ, of his virtues as a member of society, and of his learning as a scholar and divine.” He died July the 12th, 1S35, aged 74, having issued from the press 110 less than twenty-five separate publications, sermons, charges, and pamphlets. * At his death the see was abolished, or rather united to Ossory, and its revenues were taken charge of by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who let the see lands and palace to Mr. Butler Bryan. Though a layman, this gentle man endeavoured to preserve what remained of the eccle siastical ruins, and employed men to restore some portions of them at his own expense — a thing that seems never to have been thought of by the bishops, or by the owner of the castle, or any one else but this stranger. Mr. Butler Bryan would also have been a benefactor to the neighbour hood, but very soon after he was settled in Ferns he was assassinated. Walking alone in his shrubbery, he was approached by a person in the garb of a peasant, who gave him a letter, and, while in the act of reading, presented a pistol and shot him dead, in revenge, it was supposed, for some injury, real or imaginary. The assassin, who was believed to have come from Tipperary, was never punished, though a man was tried for the offence.
The successors of Bishop Ram did not fare much better than himself in the work of converting the natives. There are in the diocese 26 livings, each with an average popula tion of 98 members of the Established Church, and 1,749
* Several of his works had appeared under the signature of “S. N,”
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 279
Roman Catholics ; that is, not one to seventeen of the popu lation belong to the Established Church. The incumbents of these 26 livings enjoy, 011 an average, £304 19s. od. each. The following is a list of these benefices, which in cludes several unions : — Ballybrennan, CoolstufTe, Rathma- knee, Castle Ellis, Templescobin, Hook, Came, Edermine, Wliitechurch, Duncormick, Adamstown, Bamiow, Killegney, Taghmon, Preban, Mulrankin, Killinick, Rossdroit, Kilme- nanagh, Tomhaggard, Tacumshane, Clone, Bally waldon, Hereto wn, Featlierd, Killuran. The union of Castle Ellis contains four parishes ; Mulrankin, four ; Killinick, five ; and Tacumshane, seven. There are half a dozen parishes, with only 30 members of the Established Church between them, some having two, sonic three, some four, and so 011. The total population of the diocese of Ferns in 1834 was 197,000, of which 24,072 belonged to the Established Church, and 172,789 to the Church of Rome. The total population in 1861 was 151,368, of which 14,383 belonged to the Estab lished Church, and 135,650 to the Church of Rome. This shows a diminution of more than 10,000 in the Church population of this diocese. For these 14,000 Church people there are 63 beneficed clergymen, with a net income of £14,812, There are besides 17 curates, enjoying an income of £1,365 13*. 9(?.
The diocese of Leighliii contains 10 benefices, the Church population of which is under 50 persons. It has 29 livings, the average Church population of which is 72 souls, the average Roman Catholic population 1,270, and the average value of each living £224. The total number of benefices, including four perpetual cures, is 59, and the net income of the clergy £13,030. In 1834, the Church population of this diocese was 20,391; in 1861 it was reduced to 13,022.
As I passed through the diocese of Ferns, I observed traces of numerous churches and churchyards, which show that in past times the number of parishes was much greater. In uniting these old parishes into one benefice, the usual mis takes were committed; we find good incomes and small congregations, and small incomes with fair congregations,
280 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
There exists at present no power to correct such abuses ; but, as I have already remarked, the bishop has managed somehow to get men of competent means to fill the small posts. Of this many examples might be given. Thus, the Rev. M’Nevin Bradshaw, the incumbent of Ardamine, with 197 Church people, has his parish church three or four miles from his rectory ; while he has a pretty memorial chapel, built by Mr. S. Richards, also to provide for, which he could not do if he were not a man of property, for the net income of the benefice is only £85. Mrs. Bradshaw shows what can be done by a minister’s wife with good means and a missionary spirit, and what is being done in many cases by the wives and daughters of clergymen throughout the country. She is indefatigable in her work, conducting all sorts of benevolent societies, and labouring to improve the condition of the fishing population about Courtowii Harbour. Her first act, on coming of age and getting the control of her property, was to send over .£600 to the rector of the parish in which she then resided to clear off the debt on the church. The case of Mr. Bradshaw presents a sort of difficulty, which bishops sometimes feel — how to promote deserving ministers, without inflicting a serious privation on the parishes in which they labour. The parish of Kil- teiinel is in the gift of the Earl of Courtown. It is exten sive, and the glebe-house grows larger and larger with each rector. The gross income is £96 per annum, with twenty- two acres of beautifully situated, but not very profitable land. Hence, Lord Courtown feels obliged, when a vacancy occurs, to look out for a clergyman of private means, who can afford to occupy the position, and who would be per sonally acceptable to him, inasmuch as the rector acts very much as his private chaplain.
I have remarked, with reference to the diocese of Meath, that glebe-lands are sometimes alienated from the Church, no one can tell how. A case which has occurred in the neighbourhood of Gorey may help us to understand the process. It appears there is an Act of Parliament still in force which has escaped the notice of Members of Parliament
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 281
who are supposed to watch specially over the interests of the Church. Under this Act a rector may give a lease for thirty-one years of an outlying glebe to a middleman for half its value, and the middleman can then, if he please, sublet. The incumbent who does this may obtain a heavy fine, and he may do so towards the end of his own tenure ; or he may give it to a member of his own family, who will thus be enabled to enjoy the property of the Church for thirty-one years ; and if there is not somebody to look sharply after it, and take proceedings for its recovery, his family may enjoy it in perpetuity, as many families have done under similar circumstances. The parish of Kilcavaii is one of those which have been absorbed in unions. Its glebe-land, which is beautifully situated at the foot of Tara Hill, yields to the rector of the parish £12 a year, the farm being sublet by a gentleman who is a constabulary officer, to whom the lease was granted by his father, his benefice being sequestrated for debt.
The glebe land of the parish of Donoghmore has been lost. There is no ground even to build a house on. The parish, with 120 Protestants, has just been conferred on the Rev. Mr. Murdock, who succeeds a good and amiable man, who is said to have been “ clergyman, physician, public lecturer, and general mechanist” for the whole neighbour hood, and was fortunately able to gratify his philanthropic tastes, to rent a large house, and to exercise hospitality. In this parish are some of the leading families of the county. The new rector is an unmarried man, without a residence in the parish, and having a gross income of £129 a year. Another of these parochial anomalies may be mentioned. There is a mountainous parish, with a gross income of £177 a year, the glebe-house being at one end, and the church at the other — five or six English miles distant — the drive from one to the other being through Wicklow Gap. The late rector, starting early for Sunday-school and service, had to carry his dinner with him, and eat it in the vestry-room, that he nii°’ht be able to take an afternoon service in a
O
school-room on his way home, The Rev. Solomon Donovan,
282 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
appeared to be sinking fast under this toil ; but the bishop has had compassion on him, and promoted him to the parish of Hoaretown.
Wexford is the chief town of the county. It is a good old English town, where a number of small gentry and retired officers live economically. The population is 12,000. The benefice is a union which consists of no less than 17 parishes, and though the length of the union is 10 miles, and its breadth SJ miles, the total Church population, according to Captain Stacpoole’s returns, is only about 1,000. In 1834 it was double that number. There are two churches in the town, which would accommodate 1,000 persons, and one at RatliSjjeik, which accommodates 100. Income, including Rathspcck, gross £720, net £-115. Enniscorthy is the prin cipal business town in the county Wexford, situated on the Slaney, which is navigable from Wexford. It is one of the most nourishing towns in the south. The benefice is a union, with 39 acres of glebe land, and rentcharge, £1,014; net income, £653. The church accommodates 700, the
Church population being 1,298 in a union of live parishes
St. Mary’s, St. John’s, Bally askard, Temple-Shannon, and Clonmore. The population of the town is 5,390, and of the union, 10,595. New Ross is a union of seven parishes, the rector having a gross income of £86-4, net £550. There is church accommodation in New Ross for 1,000, and in Old Ross for 150. The total Church population of the union is about 800, the population of the borough being more than 7,000. The church is a handsome building, adjoining an old abbey.
In the leading towns of the diocese, it must be confessed, then, that the Established Church cuts a poor figure, when her people are compared with the total population ; and what she has done and is doing for religion, charity, and civili zation, will, I fear, look very small beside what has been done in the same towns by the Roman Catholic priesthood from their own unaided resources.
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CHAPTER XIV.
THE diocese of Ossory has forty-one livings, with an average of sixty-eight members of the Established Church, against 1,610 members of the Church of Rome, the average value of these livings being £297 2s. lid. It has the usual pro portion of unions, and no less than fourteen parishes, without a single member of the Established Church. The following table shows the proportion between “ the work and the reward “ in. some of the Ossory parishes : —
Kilmacow, . . 10 Anglicans, . . £208 10 10 gross value.
Killanieny, . . 20 „ .. 213 19 0
Killermooh, . .24 „ . . 461 10 0 ,,
Knocktopher, .57 „ . . 581 4 2 „
The incumbent of Eirke is represented in Stacpoole’s returns as being non-resident on account of ill health. It contains sixty-eight members of the Established Church, no Dissenters, and 2,501 Roman Catholics. The gross value of the living is £550. It is now held by the Rev. Henry Brougham, a relation of Lord Brougham. Mognalty is in the gift of the Crown, which was rather unfortunate in its appointments to that parish. A former incumbent was a lunatic, who killed one of his parishioners in a sudden attack of insanity ; and it is a curious coincidence that he got Eirke, which is another Crown living, by the insanity of the previous incumbent, who cut his own throat one Sunday morning.
The Rev. Luke Fowler is the incumbent of Aghoure, with ninety-one acres of glebe land and £030 rentcharge, yielding a net income of £074-. He was ordained in 1820, and got this good living four years after. But the patron was the bishop, and the bishop was his father. It is a union of no less than eleven parishes, and has one little church which accommodates 130 persons. The total number of Church
284 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
members of all ages in these eleven parishes is 172, three of the parishes being without any Protestants at all. The total population is 4,573, so that the Roman Catholics are to the Protestants as nearly twenty-eight to one.
The union of Callan in this diocese also attracts attention bv its vast extent and its magnificent income. Ati’houre
•7 ‘ to ~
union has an area of more than 21,000 acres, with a popu lation of 4,573, but Callan has an area of 36,941 acres, with a population of 8,453 — a charge worthy of a bishop, if the people had any faith in his ministrations. But although the union consists of six parishes, the total number of mem bers of the Established Church, infants included, is 204. The incumbent is rewarded for the pastoral care of these 204 souls with 52 acres of glebe land and £1,691 tithes or rentcharge, producing a gross revenue of £1.751, and a net income of £1,309, as it stands in “ Thorn’s Almanac ;” but in the “Irish Church Directory” it is reduced to £],094. According to Stacpoole’s returns, throe curates arc employed to instruct the 204 Protestants, receiving respectively £100, £80, and £75 a year, so that there arc three clergymen doing duty for these 200 people, for which they are paid £255. The net income of the rector, therefore, which cannot be less than the £1,300, and which would yield a fair income to five or six working clergymen, is enjoyed for doing absolutely nothing except ruling the three curates, a task which might be safely left in the hands of the bishop. The reader may be curious to learn the name of the happy man who is blest with this splendid income, and he will not be surprised to learn that he is the bishop’s brother- in-law, the Rev. William Pennefather, son of the late Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench in Ireland. Although this favoured clergyman was not without ample means of his own, the bishop, instead of placing him in a parish with much duty and small income, according to the plan he adopts in other cases, promoted him to three livings successively, one better than another, in the diocese of Ferns, and then brought him to Callan, where he could be near himself in Kilkenny. It is true that the union of Callan is in the gift
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of the Marquis of Ormonde ; but Church patrons know very well how to manage matters of this kind, and strike the balance to suit one another’s convenience.
Baltingiass is, perhaps, one of the most neglected and ill- used parishes in the whole country, so far as the spiritual wants of the Protestant population are concerned. Indeed, it seems difficult to conceive how such glaring abuses could exist if there Avas anything that deserves the name of government or discipline in the Established Church. Bal tingiass was the seat of an ancient monastery, and was famous for the learning and zeal of its inmates. It was suppressed in 1537, and its extensive possessions, including the castle and manor of Baltingiass, became the property of the Stratford family, the head of which is Earl of Aid- borough. The town was formerly a parliamentary borough, with a “ sovereign,” twelve burgesses, a recorder, a town clerk, a sergeant at mace, and a clerk of the market. But at the passing of the Reform Bill there were but two bur gesses and no freeman remaining. It was the pocket borough of the Aldborough family, who at the Union re ceived £15,000 compensation for their vested interest. Lord Aldborough had then a magnificent mansion in Dublin, Aldborough House, which was long deserted, and has been for some years used as a military barrack. He had a beautiful residence at Baltingiass, on the banks of the Slaney, commanding the most charming views of the Wicklow mountains. It was accidentally burned many years ago, since which time the family have been non-resident, although they have another fine old mansion, called Belan Hall, in the county Kildare. The present peer, who was a captain in the 1st Dragoon Guards, succeeded his father in 1849. He is eccentric, and lives away on the Continent, no one knows where, except his agent, who is said to be sworn not to reveal the secret.
The parochial church is in the precincts of the old Abbey of Baltingiass. It has sittings for 500 persons. In 1834 the parishioners consisted of 793 Churchmen, 13 Presby terians, 7 other Protestant Dissenters, and 3,419 Roman
286 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Catholics. Tn 1861 the total population of the parish was 2,649, of which only 384 were members of the Church of England, and 38 Protestant Dissenters. It appears, then, that the Protestant population has been reduced to one-half since 1834. This is not to be ascribed altogether to the famine or emigration. Indeed, the wonder is that the whole Protestant population has not gone over to the Church of Rome. The history of the parish presents a glaring illus tration of the evils of lay patronage. It belonged, either b}^ purchase or inheritance, to a gentleman, who bestowed it on himself, and held it for nearly half a century. He was married and had a family ; but not content with one wife and one family, he attached himself to a lady who was the governess of his children, with whom he lived openly as his concubine till his death, having a family by her also, for which lie provided very handsomely.
The present incumbent enjoys a net income of «£>304 a year. He is the proprietor and patron of the living, and so he appointed himself. The “ Irish Church Directory “ has a blank for the date of his ordination, a blank for the date of his admission into the diocese, and a blank for the date of his induction. These three events, therefore, are wrapt in mystery. The return of Captain Stacpoole, which is dated 1864, represented the incumbent as “ non-resident, by licence,” and the duty as being done by a curate, who re ceived a stipend of £100. The curate to whom he delegated his duties and responsibilities lived in splendid st}Tle. How he got the means for leading this sort of life was revealed several times in the Dublin Insolvent Court ; and therefore it is allowable to make allusion to the fact in a report on the Irish Establishment, setting forth its condition and government as a State institution, and the manner in which its clergy earn the public funds which they enjoy. Literates are generally distinguished by their zeal, activity, and peculiar aptitude for missionary work. It would be a great blessing for Baltinglass if a man of that stamp were sent to the parish. If that were done, the parishioners would for the first time, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, have
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some idea of what a faithful and pious minister of the Gospel could do in reclaiming a neglected population. We see in this case the operation of the principle that underlies all legislation connected with the Irish Establishment — the principle, namely, that the spiritualities of the Church are to give way to its temporalities. The claims of property are paramount. If the clergy are only curates — mere tenants-at-will — the bishop can withdraw their licences, or or the rectors can dismiss them — without assigning any reason ; and if they did assign a reason, inefficiency, or un popularity, or the slightest tinge of heterodoxy, would be quite enough. But an incumbent is almost as sacred as a king. He is hedged round by the rights of property and fortified by forms of law, which enable him, in the majority of cases, to bid defiance alike to his parishioners and his bishop. He cannot be dislodged, without a course of liti gation so expensive, vexatious, and of such doubtful issue, that people sometimes prefer to be destitute of the means of grace for a whole generation, or to become Dissenters, rather than engage in such an odious warfare.
The head-quarters of the see of Leighlin is a small village called Old Leighlin, in the county of Carlo w. We read that the present cathedral was founded by Bishop Donat, in 1185, and that it was re-edified 300 years after. This cathedral is now the parish church. It consists of the nave and chancel, and has a large stone baptismal font. The belfry tower is about sixty feet in height. As usual in the case of those ancient churches, the ornaments of the walls, pillars, and arches, were daubed over with whitewash. In 1834 the members of the Established Church in the parish amounted to 319, and the Roman Catholics to 3,237. The living is now only a perpetual curacy, with an income of £97. The impropriate tithes, which formerly belonged to the parish, amount to £461 10-s\ 9d. The Church population is 173 persons, with one Protestant Dissenter ; total population being 2,269. Yet this “ cathedral,” which accommodates 200 persons, and attached to which there is a Protestant population of only 173, has its dean, its precentor, its chan-
288 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
cellor (suspended), its treasurer, its archdeacon (the Hon. and Ven. Henry Scott Stopford), and its four prebendaries.
Before proceeding to the real cathedral of this immense united diocese, and noticing the head-quarters of the bishop, it may be as well to say a few words about some of the deans — who, next to the bishops, are the most important personages in their diocese, as it is from this class of digni taries that bishops are generally taken, and it is rarely that a simple clergyman is made a bishop per saltum, without having first purchased for himself the good degree of a dean. Some deans, indeed, never succeed in reaching the Bench. For example, Peter Brown, a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, was made Dean of Ferns in 1794, and held this dignity for forty-eight years, till he died, at the deanery, Gorcy, in 1842. Perhaps he had not sufficient interest to get a mitre, though connected with the family of Lord Sligo. A curious anecdote is related of him, when, in his old age, he used to wile away the time, and keep himself awake while the curate was preaching on Sunday, by counting in the reading desk the bank notes he had received for tithe during the previous week, quite regardless of the eyes that were fixed upon him from the gallery. Dean Brown was succeeded by the Rev. Henry Newland, D.D., Avho had been vicar of Bannow, and afterwards rector of Ferns, to which he was promoted by Bishop Ellington, who liked him for his zeal and activity in the Reformation movement that preceded Catholic Emancipation. He was a man of ability and learning, full of energy and ambition. In 1827 he published the “ Memorial of the Established Church in Ireland/’ and in 1829 appeared an able work from his pen, “ An Apology for the Established Church of Ireland,” of which the bishop spoke in the highest terms. He also pub lished “ An Examination of Dr. Doyle’s Evidence before the Committee on Tithes in Ireland.” While Dr. Newland con tinued to defend the Establishment against its assailants, he was very popular with the clergy, and honoured as a distin guished champion of their cause. But by a series of publications in favour of the Government plan of national
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 289
education, founded by Lord Stanley, the present Earl of Derby, he made himself a black sheep. In 1836 he pub lished his examination of the “Scripture Lessons,” trans lated by the Commissioners of Education in Ireland. In 1845 he gave to the world “ Observations on the Past and Present Condition of the Education of the Poor of Ireland ; and in 1850, “Remarks on the State of Education in Ire land.” His last production, which appeared in 1859, was “ The Life and Contemporaneous Church History of Antonio de Dominis, Archbishop of Spallatro,” a work which was published at Oxford. His publications on the education question were valuable, sound in argument, and vigorously written ; but they brought him nothing save discredit and aversion from the great body of the clergy, while they failed to obtain for him the expected mitre from the Government. The later years of his life, therefore, were clouded with dis appointment, and rendered unhappy by broken health, and a load of debt in which he is said to have been involved, like many other clergymen, by the extravagance of his sons. His living was sequestrated for years, and he died in the midst of his difficulties, branded by his brethren as a “castle dean,” though he had talents, learning, and virtues, which might have made him one of the brightest ornaments of the episcopal bench. His successor, the Rev. Hamilton Verschoyle, was more fortunate. He, too, was branded as a- “ castle clean,” because he had changed his mind on the education question, and had written a pamphlet on the sub ject. But he had powerful influence, and was rewarded in a few months with one of the best sees in Ulster. This deanery has been indentified in a remarkable manner with the education question. The present Dean Atkins, formerly a Fellow of Trinity College, who succeeded Dr. Verschoyle, had long been distinguished as the able and consistent ad vocate of united education, and the Bishop of Ossory cannot fairly class him with the “ Balaams “ of the Establishment. He was recently named with Dr. Graves and Dr. Magee as one of the likeliest dignitaries to be appointed to the vacant see of Limerick, and though lacking the Parliamentary
U
290 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
influence of noble families, his claims cannot long be over looked by any Government that considers the interests of the Church in the appointment of bishops.
The late Dean of Leighlin was the Honorable Richard Boyle Bernard, D.D., second son of the first Earl of Bandon, and was appointed in 1822. It sometimes happens that men of wealth and aristocratic connexions are distinguished for penurious habits, and Dean Bernard was a little eccentric in this way. Nevertheless his savings were turned to good account. He died at Leighlm in 1850, and left the following bequests: To the Church Education Society for Ireland, ,£1,000 ; the Irish Society, £500 ; the Infant School at Leighlin Bridge, £50; and £100 in smaller sums to other charitable institu tions. The present Dean is Mr. Lander, who was appointed in 1864, the same year in which he was admitted to the diocese. In the “ Church Directory “ there is a blank for his ordination. He is incumbent of the union of Wells, which is in the gift of the Crown, and produces a net income of £228, quite enough for the duties he lias to perform, for there are only seventy-three Protestants in the parish, of whom two are Dissenters, the Roman Catholic population amounting to 1,000.
Archdeacon Cotton states that the title “Dean of Ossory” is irregular and improper, there being no such office as that of dean of a diocese. A dean is either dean of a cathedral, or a collegiate church, or a royal chapel. In all official documents from the earliest time down to the present, the dean of this cathedral was called the Dean of Kilkenny, or much more frequently Dean of St. Canice. There have been but two incumbents of this deanery since 1795, the date of the ap pointment of the Hon. Joseph Bourke, son of the third Earl of Mayo. He held the office for forty-eight years, and died at Sal thill, near Dublin, in 1843. A tablet was erected to his memory in the cathedral. The inscription circumspice would not have suited that tablet ; for he left his cathedral a pile of ruins and a mass of rubbish, its finely-chiselled marble columns being daubed over with several coats of whitewash, and some of its beautiful arches closed up with
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 291
rude masonry, so that their very existence was unknown. This honorable and tasteless dean was succeeded by Charles Vignoles, D.D., the present incumbent. He was son of the Rev. John Vignoles, for twenty-four years minister of the French church in Portarlington, who was descended from an ancient and distinguished family in Languedoc, some mem bers of which took refuge in Ireland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Many of the French refugees settled at Portarlington in the Queen’s County, and made it one of the neatest towns in Ireland, celebrated as a place of educa tion. The French congregation has ceased to exist, the families having merged into the Established Church popu lation, and not a few of them having established themselves among the gentry of the country, and supplied the Church with some of the best of its ministers. Dr. Vignoles was for some time Dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin. He has occupied his present position since 1843, having been or dained in 1811, so that he is fifty-five years in the ministry. It is much to the praise of a dignitary of his advanced age that he is now engaged in the work of restoring his cathe dral. It is a pity that so much precious time has been lost, and that such a humiliating monument of neglect was per mitted to offend the eye and shock the taste so long ; but better late than never.
If, reasoning from analogy, and expecting edifices and arrangements worthy of the professions and pretensions of a great, wealthy, and religious community, we find at its head-quarters nothing of this kind, but what is neglected, ruinous, poor, and mean, the feeling of disappointment at the incongruity must be painful and mortifying in the extreme. It is difficult to imagine that the chief members of a hierarchy, splendidly endowed by the State, can be sin cerely devoted to their Church as a spiritual institution, designed to instruct and elevate the people, and to give them worthy conceptions of the Divine Majesty, if the principal buildings consecrated to His worship are allowed to remain from generation to generation in a state of decay — if they
u2
292 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
suffer the very sanctuary to be surrounded by rubbish, and the most beautiful and costly works of art, bequeathed by the public spirit and liberality of a former age, to be defaced, mutilated, trampled under foot, or buried out of sight under accumulated filth. If such things were permitted to exist in the metropolis of a country, the culpability would be greatest, and the presumption of the want of genuine religious feeling and zeal in the rulers of the Church most damaging. But great blame must attach to any bishop even in the smallest diocese who is content to officiate from year to year in a cathedral whore everything around him is sordid ; where deformity and dirt are the prevailing characteristics of the place. If we were to leave religious feeling out of the case altogether, the wonder is that, as a mere matter of taste and
C? 7
self-respect, a number of educated gentlemen like the bishop and the dean and chapter of a diocese could sleep in peace, or face the public with complacency, where this state of things existed. Yet such has been the state of things almost from the Reformation to the present time in many of the cathedrals of the Established Church in Ireland. Some of them were dilapidated and almost ruined during the civil wars ; but in whatever state Protestantism found them, in that same state, with few exceptions, it has left them to our own time ; while not a single new cathedral worthy of the name has been erected in any part of the country for 300 years. The only two cases of complete restoration which have occurred are due to the munificence of individuals, one of them the late Lord Primate, and the other a layman, Mr. Guinness. But although the Primate was liberal, it must be admitted that what he spent on his cathedral was a very small sum com pared with the enormous revenue he had received from the Church as a bishop during half a century, not to speak of the other members of the Beresford family, who had long enjoyed some of its wealthiest bishoprics; nor should the fact be concealed that the layman’s contribution to the work of cathedral restoration has been fivefold more than the contribution of the prelate. The late Primate, however,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 203
surpassed all his brethren on the bench in munificence, and he deserves great credit for having set an example which is now being followed by several bishops.
The cathedral of St. Canice, at Kilkenny, was originally a splendid building, scarcely inferior in magnitude, complete ness, and ornamentation, to St. Patrick’s in Dublin. I recollect having attended public worship in that building many years ago, when divine service was conducted in the chancel, which was enclosed in the most tasteless manner, the marble pillars being covered with whitewash, and the whole aspect of the place indicating that ugliness, deformity, and shabbiness had been specially cultivated by the Dean and Chapter. All the rest of the grand old temple, which has stood upon that hill for seven centuries, succeeding another edifice which had stood for five centuries, was aban doned to the genius of decay. I paid Kilkenny a visit last year in the prosecution of this inquiry. Not being aware that the cathedral was closed, and that the process of resto ration had at last commenced, I ascended the sacred mount by a flight of time-worn steps, which led into a narrow lane by which it is surrounded, a high wall excluding the view, and presenting the appearance of a fortification. Advancing to the right the visitor sees an old wooden bridge, forming a passage from the bishop’s palace to the cathedral. This passage has been discontinued, and his lordship now ventures to enter by a door on a level with the road. The enclosure around the cathedral is an immense graveyard covered with monuments, many of them full of historic interest. The cathedral being shut during the renovation, the service was performed in the schoolhouse adjoining. This building accommodates from 120 to 150 persons, which was about the number of the congregation present, including children. It is fitted up as a place of worship, with a communion table at the end, and a pulpit and reading-desk placed one at each side in the usual way. Near the door, to the right, were two or three gentlemen and seven boys, who constituted the cathedral choir. They had no surplices, nor any sort of distinctive dress, and for an organ there was a little bar-
294 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
monium, at which, the performer sat as if at a small piano in a drawing-room. It was the most puny and miserable attempt at choral service I had ever witnessed; and it was certainly very disappointing after reading in the Irish Church Directory about the dean, the precentor, the precentor’s vicar, the dean’s vicar, the vicars choral, and the numerous preben daries. The least that one should expect from the dignitaries of a cathedral is, that they should keep up a well instructed and efficient choir. If this be wanting, and if the service be conducted by them just as it is in rural parish churches, where a few persons volunteer to sing, instead of the parish clerk solo, people will naturally inquire what is the use of a cathedral. The bishop took part in the service, occupying a chair at the communion table. A bishop in lawn sleeves in such a rude and diminutive “pro-cathedral,” gives one the idea of a chief judge sitting in his robes on the bench at petty sessions.
Considerable progress has been made in the restoration. A new roof has been put on, and the walls with their orna mental crosses have been restored with excellent taste, arid in the strictest harmony with the original style of the building. The whole of the interior has been cleared out, and the magnificent proportions of the old cathedral have been fully revealed. The people who had worshipped in it for generations could have had but a faint conception of what those proportions were. Lofty arches, of exquisite workmanship, were built up and completely hid. A beautiful chapel and other appendages were overwhelmed and con cealed in ruins. The marble pillars, as well as the walls, were covered with half-a-dozen successive coats of whitewash; numerous marble monuments of bishops, abbots, earls, and other historic personages, were buried under rubbish, or lying neglected, like boulders cropping out in a field, no one seeming to heed those costly works of art, so interesting to the antiquary and the historian. That the monuments of “Popish saints and bishops” should have been thus con temptuously disregarded by Croinwellian Protestants may “be accounted for ; but what seems inexplicable is, that the
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monuments of the noble house of Ormonde should have been thus treated from age to age. Kilkenny Castle, the seat of the Marquis of Ormonde, the present head of the Butler family — once the greatest in Ireland except the Geraldines — is worth visiting, as an existing model of the grand old feudal castles of the Anglo-Norman barons in the middle ages — proudly overlooking the city which grew up under its shadow, and by the strength of its gates, walls, and towers, bidding defiance to all assailants. It is beautifully situated on the banks of the Nore, commanding charming views of the surrounding country, and of the most picturesque portions of the city. An old writer on Ireland thus describes the scene : — “ The subjacent town appears as if it had been built merely to be looked at. Not Eton’s spires, not Cooper’s classic hill, not Clif den’s gay alcove, or Gloucester’s gayer lodge, can furnish such a lavish variety to the landscape painter as those Hibernian scenes. There nature has painted with her most correct pencil ; here she has dashed with a more careless hand. This is the fanciful and fiery sketch of a great master; that the touched and finished work of a studious composer/’ We may judge of what the owner of this castle was in the days of its glory by the titles given to him when he was attainted in 1715 : — “ The most high, puissant, and noble Prince, James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, Earl of Brecknock, and Baron of Lanthong and Moore Park in England ; Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Ormonde ; Earl of Ossory and Carrick ; Viscount Thurles, and Baron of Dingle and Arklow in Ireland ; Baron of Ding-wall in Scotland ; hereditary Lord of the Regalities and Governor of the County Palatine of Tipperary, and of the city, town; and county of Kilkenny ; hereditary Lord Chief Butler of Ireland ; Lord High Constable of England ; Lord Warden and Admiral of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle; Lord Lieutenant of the County of Somerset ; Lord Lieutenant and Gustos Rotulorum of the County of Norfolk ; High Steward of the cities of Exeter, Bristol, and Westminster ; Chancellor of the Universities of Oxford and Dublin ; Colonel of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards, and of the 1st Regiment of
296 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Horse Guards ; Captain General and Commander-in-Chief of all his Majesty’s Forces by Sea and Land throughout the British Dominions or acting in conjunction with the Allied Powers ; one of his Majesty’s most honorable Privy Council in England and Ireland ; Knight Companion of the most noble Order of the Garter ; and Lord-Lieutenant-General and General-Governor of Ireland.”
The revenue from his estates, which were then forfeited, was estimated at £80,000 a year. Carte states that the losses of the first duke by the troubles in Ireland in 1641 amounted to £808,500 beyond all official profits, and every description of remuneration afterwards received. This was the grandfather of the attainted duke, who joined the Pre tender in France, and died in comparative poverty at Avignon. In 1791, John Butler, of Garry ricken, was restored to the earldom of Ormonde by the Irish House of Lords. In 1816 his successor, Walter, was created marquis. Further steps were obtained in 1820 and 1825, and in 1838 the second marquis by the new patent succeeded to the dignities and estates.
Kilkenny played a very prominent part in the history of the warfare between the English Pale arid the nation. A great Council of English barons was held there in 1294. In 1309 the Colonial Parliament assembled there, and passed the most severe laws against the adoption of Irish customs, which were enforced by anathemas fulminated from the cathedral by the Archbishop of Cashel ; and at various other times English Parliaments were held in the city; one of the most cruel of the anti-social enactments of those times being distinguished as “ the Statute of Kilkenny.” In 1641 the city was seized by Lord Mount Garret, and it became the head-quarters of the Catholic Confederation. James I. erected the town into a borough and a free city, with a county of its own, to be called the county of the city of Kilkenny. Charles I., in 1639, granted to the mayor and citizens the monasteries of the Black and Gray Friars, with several rectories, and other possessions. It seems strange, therefore, that with such a history this cathedral, which contained its
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principal monuments, should be allowed to fall into decay — the more strange as we read of several attempts made to restore it. Bishop Ledred, in the early part of the fourteenth century, rebuilt the cathedral, and placed in it a window of stained glass, so beautiful that Rinuncini, the Pope’s Nuncio, offered £700 for it in 1645. Bishop Hackett, in 1460, made some additions to the building, and so did several other Roman Catholic prelates. A Protestant bishop, Griffith Williams, in 1641, spent £1,700 in restoring and beautifying this cathedral. It was also embellished, towards the end of the seventeenth century, by Bishop Otway, who gave to it a service of communion plate weighing .363 ounces.
When the restoration is complete, it will answer to the following description: — The interior lofty, the nave separated from the aisles by a range of rive clustered columns on each side, composed of the black Kilkenny marble, with lofty and gracefully moulded arches, lighted by a large west window of beautiful design, and a range of five clerestory windows, the aisles having four windows on each side. The choir has a beautifully groined ceiling, embellished with delicate tracery and numerous modillions, with a central group of cherubs, festoons and foliage of exquisite richness. At the end of the south transept is the consistory court on one side, and the chapter house on the other. On the eastern side of the north transept stood the beautiful chapel of St. Mary, which had been converted into a parish church. Altogether, it will be, when finished, a magnificent edifice, of which any city might be proud, if regarded merely as an ornament ; but in the present age it is difficult to exclude the idea of utility in connexion with the most beautiful and costly architecture — an idea .which was fully realized in the ages called bar barous, when those great churches were erected. In the centuries which intervened between the Conquest and the Reformation, there was an obvious fitness in a cathedral like this, for no building of less magnitude could have accom modated the multitude of worshippers, especially on festive occasions, when all the people were of one faith. But now it may be fairly asked, what will the Protestants of Kilkenny
298 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
do with this vast building ? Hitherto it afforded accom modation for 280 persons ; henceforth it will be able to accommodate twenty times that number. Now, the total number of the members of the Established Church, of all ages, in the city of Kilkenny is 1,242 ; while the total Roman Catholic population is 12,669. Little more than 700 or 800 Episcopalians can be counted upon to attend public worship, and for their accommodation there are two parish churches besides St. Canice’s. St. Mary’s, an interesting church, kept in excellent order, and distinguished as the place in which the Rev. Peter Roe officiated for many years, and left behind him a name still gratefully remembered, is the one which is resorted to by the gentry and most of the respectable inhabitants ; and without the cathedral there is ample church accommodation for all the Protestants in the city. But if the whole of them were to attend the cathedral, they would be comparatively lost in that vast cold edifice ; and in order to be at all comfortable, they must shut themselves up in the chancel, or in the Virgin’s Chapel, leaving the nave as a sort of museum for the exhibition of ancient monuments. The truth is, that without a multitude of worshippers, a numerous hierarchy, and a pompous liturgy, there seems to be no rational purpose that a large cathedral can answer. These things are all on the side of the Church of Rome, for which the Irish cathedrals were originally built, and, despairing of getting them back, she has been building very beautiful and very costly ones for herself, of which not the least remarkable is the new cathedral of Kilkenny, with, a magnificent tower that casts old St. Canice’s into the shade.
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CHAPTER XV.
THE Roman Catholic Bishop of Ferns lives in Wexford, the county town, and also the great centre of religious influence for the diocese, coming to his cathedral at Enniscorthy, which is twelve miles distant, whenever his services are required. The owner of Enniscorthy, and of some miles of country about it, is the Earl of Portsmouth, who inherits his Irish estates from Sir Henry Wallop, Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer of War in Ireland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was also a Lord Justice, and there is an inscription to his memory in St. Patrick’s Church, Dublin, which records that during his government in Ireland the Desmond Avars terminated, and the head of that nobleman was sent to England. On his return to his own country in 1591, he had the honour of entertaining the Queen and her court at Farley- Wallop. He could well afford to do so, if only from his Irish estates, which included the castle, manor, and abbey of Enniscorthy. The abbey has disappeared, but the castle remains, and some of the apartments in it were used as offices till a recent period, when it was abandoned — in consequence, it is said, of dampness, which could be easily prevented. By pointing the walls and repairing the roof it might be made to stand for ages yet, if only as an orna ment to the town, as it occupies a commanding position, and is a very picturesque object, when viewed from the opposite side of the Slaney. But it seems to be abandoned to decay. There is no building or charitable institution which bears the name of Wallop, or Portsmouth, or Lymington. There are an immense workhouse, a magnificent lunatic asylum, just erected, like a palace ; a handsome model school, a good church, and a Roman Catholic cathedral ; but the lord of the soil does not seem to the tourist to have had anything to do with any of those buildings, or the institutions which they represent. At the principal hotel there are two beau-
300 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
tiful portraits of the present Lord and Lady Portsmouth— a very handsome couple ; but they were brought over by a speculator, hawked about among the tenants, and disposed of to them at a very high price.
The Enniscorthy Cathedral is by no means pretentious in its character. It occupies an elevated site on Duffry Hill, and has a lofty tower, but the front, which is faced with granite, is low. The pillars which support the arches at each side of the nave are also granite. The arches are painted in different colours, not like marble, but rather like the paper which we see in the halls of private dwelling- houses. The effect is not good. There is a striking want of taste in having granite pillars surmounted by such tawdry decorations. There are also three arches at each side of the chancel, and behind the high altar, which is simple, is a very large window, on which twenty-eight figures of saints are brightly painted. To the right of the chancel, where it is separated from the nave, stands a line marble statue of the “ Virgin and Child,” upon an elevated pedestal, which is adorned with vases, containing a profusion of flowers, placed there in honour of “ the Queen of Heaven,” to whom also is dedicated a pretty altar in a little chapel to the right. Corresponding to the statue of the Virgin, is a very fine marble statue of St. Joseph, for which contributions are solicited, and a box is placed there to receive them. The whole of this church is comfortably seated, and in a front gallery there is a beautiful organ. Altogether, the aspect and arrangements of this church show that comfort and economy and adaptation to the actual wants of the population were the objects of its founders, rather than ostentatious display or architectural pretension.
The Protestants of Enniscorthy have a very respectable church, comparatively new, with a good tower and a lofty spire, which appears to great advantage at the north side of the Slaney ; but the building is almost lost to view in the town itself, being partly buried in a small ill-kept graveyard, with a dismal dead wall and some old ruinous houses separating it from the narrow street. It accommodates 700 people, and
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 301
is well attended. There is no regard whatever paid to in ternal ornamentation. The pews are dingy and dirty, and I noticed but one monument in the church, a modest tablet to the memory of Mr. Jacob. The glebe-house and grounds are among the best to be found in the country. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the situation, with the famous Vinegar Hill in the background, which witnessed such a” bloody struggle in 1708, the walls of the windmill from which the rebels were hanged still surviving as a monument of that terrible religious conflict. In front winds the river
O
Slaney, clear as crystal, through the greenest of pastures, its banks on either side adorned with villas and beautifully wooded grounds, and in the distance rise Mount Leinster and Blackstairs, a lofty range, which separates the counties of Wexford and Carlow. The glebe consists of about forty acres of good land, and the plantations about it are very fine and kept in excellent order. The reiitcharge is upwards of £1,000 a year, the gross income being £1,080, and the net, £053. Forty years ago the incumbent of this fine living was Mr. Radcliffe, who lived in splendid style, and kept two first-class hunters in his stables, with which his son followed the hounds two or three times a week. The old Protestant inhabitants state that Mrs. Radcliffe spent money at a rate that would soon have emptied all the banks in the town, and that on one occasion she lost by gambling in Dublin £300, her carriage, and a pair of horses. Whether these stories are true or false, it is certain that the living- was sequestrated for debt, and that the incumbent was con fined to his house except on Sundays. Under such circum stances the Protestants of the parish must have been sadly neglected, and been kept together, as in many other places, much more by intense hatred of Popery than by a knowledge of their religion. The parish has been well worked by an excellent minister, the Very Rev. Denis Brown, Dean of Emly, one of the most esteemed leaders of the Evangelical party, who enjoyed the living for about twenty years. As under the RadcliiFe regime extravagance was the order of the day, so under the Brown regime economy was carried
302 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
to an extreme, though the rector, it is said, had ample means of indulging his benevolent feelings, while he was sur rounded by many poor people much needing his help, espe cially in the famine time.
Enniscorthy is six miles from Ferns, and it was Sir Henry Wallop, successor to the Enniscorthy Abbot, that assisted his countryman, Bishop Ram, ancestor of the Ranis of Gorey, to wall up the natives into conformity (I do not mean to convey that this is the origin of the word). Dean New- land obtained in Dublin as his curate a highly-gifted young man of poetic temperament, the son of a man of genius, the late Mr. Kirk, the sculptor. This young gentleman was carried away by the Puseyite movement in England, and circulated the “Tracts for the Times” far and wide amongst the Protestants of the parish, and the surrounding district. lie was a great favourite with the Rains, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Mrs. Ram, sister to the Countess of Ennis- killen, a most accomplished lady, of highly cultivated ta-ste, having an intense love of the beautiful in art and nature, and charmed with what she saw of it in the churches of Italy, lent all the influence of the family to further the re vival the curate had set on foot ; and the Dean was not strongminded or independent enough to resist the inno vations. But the stubborn Protestantism of Gorey would not so easily give way. The sons and daughters of the men who had lavishly shed their blood in the battles with “ Papists” in 1798, were not to be captivated with cere monies which they contemptuously described as the “ mum meries of superstition, and the rags of Popery,” nor were they to be persuaded to accept them by the influence of their landlord’s wife, though she were an angel from heaven, and, indeed, she was very like one. Accordingly, the parish church was deserted. Mr. Kirk, foiled in his attempts at renaissance, went in disgust to England, and he ultimately be came a priest in that Church where so many of his Tractarian brethren sought the full gratification of their spiritual longings. The Rams went abroad, and ultimately approached the same fountain to quench their spiritual thirst. Hence-
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forth Mrs. Earn became an intensely ardent propagandist of Catholicism. Along the shaded walks, and among the great old ancestral trees of Ramsfort, planted by the Bishop, every one of which seemed consecrated to Protestantism, in secula seculoruin, appeared at every turn a beautiful cross, a full length figure of the Saviour, or a lovely statue of the Virgin. A new Roman Catholic church was erected in the town ; a nunnery, with schools amply endowed, sprang up as if by magic ; Sisters of Mercy arid long-robed priests promenaded in all directions about the demesne ; religious fetes of all sorts were the order of the day — and so it still continues. After these changes were effected, the bad feeling which they had produced was exasperated to the utmost by the preaching of a new curate, a red-hot zealot of the Evan gelical school, an eloquent man, but exceedingly violent, intemperate, and controversial in his pulpit harangues. This was the state in which poor Dean Newland left the parish when he died. His present successor, Dean Atkins, seems admirably adapted to heal wounded feelings on both sides ; and to show what may be done by a really judicious clergyman, who acts in a Christian spirit, I may mention that Mr. Ram now contributes liberally to Church objects, and that 011 a late occasion, when one of Mrs. Ram’s converts, who was dying — a young man who was a servant in the house — repented of his change, and insisted on receiving the last rites from the Protestant clergyman, the Roman Catholics, who under other circumstances would have riot ously resisted his interment in Protestant ground, attended his funeral in large numbers, perfectly satisfied that the change was real, and that no unfair means had been used to bring him back to the Established Church. There is an im portant lesson in this fact. Protestantism loses nothing, but gains everything, by justice and gentleness, and by acting in the spirit of Christian toleration.
The Roman Catholic revival during the last quarter of a century in Ireland has taken a direction in regard to doctrine and worship which may be regarded as an innovation of very grave import. The doctrinal system which prevailed up to
804 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the present generation was what might be called — to adopt a Protestant phrase — “ Low Church.” The tone of contro versy, wherever it was adopted, was rather apologetic, and the policy defensive rather than aggressive ; and there seemed to be everywhere a desire to present what Protestants regard as the errors of the system in a mitigated form. There was no compromise certainly with regard to funda mental doctrines, such as Transubstantiation and the sacri fice of the Mass ; but the worship of the Blessed Virgin and the intercession of the saints were very much explained away, while the mediation, as well as the atonement of Christ, was asserted and prominently put forth in cate chisms and popular treatises on Christian doctrine. But since the passing of the Emancipation Act, and more espe cially since the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was promulgated, there has been a strong tendency, acceler ated from year to year, to magnify the Virgin, and to give her the place on the Throne of Mercy, and the position as an all-powerful mediator, which Protestants hold to be the peculiar prerogatives of the Redeemer. It would be a very interesting inquiry to ascertain the cause of this change. The Divine wisdom manifested in the scheme of Redemption lias always been the theme of admiration, chiefly because of its adaptation to the wants of human nature. To prove the supernatural origin of Christianity it has been argued that sinners would not dare to approach the Deity, if he were presented to them only in his aspect as the Supreme Ruler, infinitely just as well as irresistible in his might and awful in his majesty. But when his Son condescended to lay aside his Father’s glory, to come down from his eternal throne, to take human nature upon him, to suffer from the ordinary wants of humanity, to be tried and afflicted like sinful men, in order that he might be “ touched with a feel ing of their infirmities,” and be able to sympathize with them thoroughly in all their misery, as “a brother born for adversity,” when he consummated a life of perfect virtue and self-denial by suffering the most ignominious and pain ful death as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, in order to
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 305
open up a way of salvation and to reconcile a fallen and rebellious race to their offended Creator; and when, to crown all, he rose from the grave, ascended into heaven, and even upon his throne at the right hand of the Father retained his sympathy and compassion, still “ bending from heaven a brother’s eye,” still pleading earnestly and irresistibly for all who trust in him ; when all this has been done, Protestants believe that nothing has been left undone by which penitent, weary, heavy-laden sinners can be encouraged to approach the Throne of Grace, and be drawn by the Holy Spirit from evil courses to a life of obedience, animated by the purify ing hope of eternal glory. But the Church of Rome teaches that something more is necessary. In the position which she has assigned to the Blessed Virgin in the mediatorial system, she has availed herself to the utmost of a source of attraction which has been in all ages most powerful with the heart of man. In woman he beholds the most beautiful object in creation, whose form excites his admiration, whose trusting tenderness and devoted attachment inspire him with love, whose virgin purity he holds to be sacred. The Mother of Jesus appears in the Church of Rome invested with all those sweet, endearing attributes exalted, intensitied, ethe- realized in the highest possible degree. She is presented as a model of perfect beauty, adorned with all the most win ning graces of her sex, born without sin, and living without an impure thought, yet with a heart full of affection for sinners. She is a virgin mother, holding the infant Saviour in her arms, and gazing upon him with all a mother’s fondness. She stands by his cross at the last hour, faithful when all other friends had failed him, undismayed by the terrors which surrounded him, unaffected by the infamy of his death. Finally, she follows her risen Son to share his glory without feeling the power of death, and appears crowned as the Queen of Heaven, with all the authority as well as the affection of a mother — as “ The Mother of God,” as well as the mother of “the Man, Christ Jesus” — and having the power to command her Son, as well as the privi lege to plead with him for her clients.
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306 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Such is the position which the Blessed Virgin holds in the Roman Catholic system of divinity, as it exists at present, and has done for a long time on the Continent, for when the present Pope issued his decree on the Immaculate Concep tion, against the remonstrances of many of the most learned divines, he was but giving expression to the prevailing belief which the Jesuits and other religious orders had been incul- catin’T for au*es. I do not advert to the subject for any
O o *J ‘ «/
polemical purpose, but merely to state • matters of fact as fairly as I can, and to account for the things which I am about to describe in connexion with Roman Catholic worship in this country. Most of my readers are aware that the month of May is now specially dedicated to the Virgin, and that it is called “ the Month of Mary.” It is generally ushered in by pastorals from the Roman Catholic bishops prescribing cvrlYiin devotions. But I think Protestants generally are not aware of the extent to which Roman Ca tholic zeal manifests itself in connexion with this devotion to “ the Queen of Heaven.” My attention was specially called to it on my visit to the Enniscorthy Cathedral on the 4th of May. I have already described the decorations of the Virgin’s altar there. On visiting the Christian Brothers’ Schools adjoining, I found on the right at the top of the upper room, in which the advanced pupils are taught, a small statue of the Virgin and Child, standing in a beautiful shrine or tabernacle amidst floral ornaments. The Christian Brothers, who had charge of the school — exceedingly nice, gentlemany young men, dressed in black gowns with square caps — explained that the May devotions to the Blessed Virgin had sprung up in Italy, and now prevailed very much in Ireland. I had plenty of proofs of this in the town of Wexford, where there are two splendid new churches, with grand towers, built almost exactly alike, in cathedral style ; erected also at the same time, and chiefly through the exer tions of the same priest. One of them is called the Church of the Immaculate Conception, and the other the Church of the Assumption ; both, therefore, specially dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There could be no mistake about this in the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 307
mind of any one visiting these splendid places of worship, which are fitted up admirably with seats to the very doors, finished in the most approved style, and with a degree of taste that would do honour to the best cathedrals in Eno--
O
land. Behind the high altar there is a very large window of stained glass, and a similar one of smaller dimensions at each side. To the right is Mary’s Chapel, with an altar brilliant and gorgeous in the extreme. There is a beautiful statue of the Virgin and Child, before which three lamps were burning during the day, and in the evening eight or nine dozen of candles are lighted, while ten or twelve vases are filled with a variety of flowers, kept constantly fresh, and producing the most brilliant and dazzling effects for the worshippers, who are nearly all attracted to this favourite altar, the beauty and splendour of which throw the altar of Christ completely into the shade. Generally, indeed, the Saviour appears only agonized 011 the Cross, his hands fastened with nails, and the blood flowing from his pierced side, or else lying dead and ghastly in the Sepulchre. It is only the Virgin that appears arrayed in beauty, crowned with majesty, and encircled with glory. Her altar in the Wex- ford Church of the Assumption is decorated in the same style as the Immaculate Conception, but not with so much elaboration. Great local sacrifices must have been made for the erection and furnishing of these two churches, with their magnificent towers and spires, but much of the money came from Great Britain and the colonies; and to a question which I put on the subject to my guide, I received for answer that it came “from all parts of the habitable world.”
But beautiful as those two new churches are, they are sur passed in internal decorations by the Franciscan Church of this town. This is a perfect gem in its way — so elegantly painted and ornamented, and so nicely kept, so bright and cheering in its aspect, and evincing such regard to comfort in all its arrangements, that we can easily conceive it to be a very popular and fashionable place of worship. It is not cruciform, but built in the shape of an L. To the left of
x2
308 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the principal altar, at the junction of the two portions, stands in impressive prominence the altar of the Virgin Mary, which is covered by an elevated canopy, resting upon white and blue pillars with golden capitals. Upon, the altar stands a beautiful marble statue of the Virgin. Three lamps burn constantly before it. One hundred candles are lighted round it in the evening with half a dozen gas-burners. Floral ornaments are in the greatest profusion and variety. There are four large stands on the altar floor } two others higher up on the pedestal, and a number of small vases with bouquets ranged on the altar. The Friary attached to the church presents a. picture of order, neatness, and cleanliness, which seemed to be a reflection of the characteristics of the “English baronies,” showing how national idiosyncracies and social circumstances affect religion. In fact, a com munity of Quakers could not keep their establishment in better order than these Franciscans keep their friary. I observed a great contrast in this respect in the Roman Ca tholic establishments of Waterford and Thurles. Wexford, indeed, is quite a model town in the Roman Catholic Church. There are three other places of worship besides those already mentioned — the college chapel and the nunnery chapels, and certainly there are no people in the world, perhaps, not ex cepting the Romans themselves, more abundantly supplied with masses. There is a mass for working men at five o’clock in the morning, there are masses daily during the week at later hours, and no less than six or seven on Sun days in each of the principal chapels, or churches as they are now generally called. The college is a large building, and in connexion with it is the residence of the bishop, Dr. Furlong. Two facts will show the paramount influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the diocese of Ferns, which is nearly commensurate with the county of Wexford : no Catholic in it dares to open a public-house on Sunday, and no fair or market is held upon any of the Roman Catholic holidays. If a fair chances to fall upon a holiday, it is transferred to some other day in the week. It must be
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said, to the credit of the Roman Catholic clergy of Wex ford, that a better conducted people than theirs does not exist in the United Kingdom.
The proportion of Roman Catholics to Protestants in this diocese is 9^ to 1. Very large sums have been expended during the last fifty years on religious edifices of various kinds. The new churches and chapels in the principal towns and throughout the country are stated in the “ Irish Catho lic Directory” to have cost £112,800; parochial houses and houses of regulars about £20,000. Dr. Howlctt, of New Ross, grand-nephew to Bishop Doyle, states that in his opinion £20,000 ought to be added to this estimate for these two items. The sum of £10,000 has been spent on the diocesan college, £W,oO() on the erection of the Christian Brothers’ schools and on parochial school houses, while, dur ing the same period, nine convents have been built at a cost of £27,000. The sum total for the half century is given in the Directory as ^180, -iOO; but according to Dr. Hewlett, it should be £200,000. The proportion of Roman Catholic children in the National schools of this county is stated to be 147 to 1. But it must bo remembered that the Estab lished clergy in that diocese, almost to a man, have unfor tunately set their faces against the National schools, greatly to the detriment of the Protestant people.
Before leaving the town of Wexford I must notice the humiliating contrast presented by the Established Church in. point of ecclesiastical architecture. After admiring the magnificent proportions and towering grandeur of the Roman Catholic churches, occupying commanding sites, the visitor finds with difficulty the parish church in a narrow street. To say that the building is old and ugly would be saying- little. Its dark, heavy, old-fashioned walls and roof, its semicircular windows, its rusty iron railings in front, and iron gates fastened with big padlocks, all give one the idea of an ancient bridewell shut up and deserted for want of prisoners. It is really most discreditable to all parties concerned to have such a building for a parish church in a town like Wexford. We have too many such monuments.
310 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
as the old church of Wexford to prove the truth of what the Dean of Cork said in a letter to the Rev. W. C. Plunket, that there is no people in the world Avho do so little for their religion as the laity of the Established Church of Ireland.
In this diocese the Roman Catholics have 150 primary schools, three of which are convent schools, deriving no aid from the State, and six are monastic schools. They have also 80 public circulating libraries. The number of parish priests is 40, and of curates, 72. The total number of priests is 129, of whom 13 are regulars. There are nine convents, with 121 members in community, and four monastic houses.
I have already noticed whnt was done by the late Bishop Doyle in the united dioceses nf Xildure and Leighlin with regard to the erection of ecclesiastical edifices. A respected parish priest, the Rev. P. Carry, of Bonis, has kindly fur- nished the following particulars of what has been done in that direction since his time. In the united diocese there have been erected —
120 chapels, at from £1,500 to £2,000 each, . £200,000
14 convents, at =£2,500 each, . . . 35,000
2 colleges, at £15,000 each, . . . 30,000
2 friaries, at £5,000 each, . . . 10,000
4 Christian Brothers’ establishments, . . 2,000
2 monasteries, ..... 4,000
Total ecclesiastical buildings, . £281,000
He cannot estimate the cost of primary schools and paro chial houses, which must be very great. For example, in his own parish there are nine schools for poor children, and they were all built by the voluntary contributions of the people. The educational establishments in the diocese are St. Patrick’s College, Carlo w ; Clongowes Wood, Kildare, and the seminaries of Mountrath, Tullow, Newbridge, and Kildare. The total number of primary schools is 253. The bishop is the Right Rev. Dr. AValshe, who was consecrated in 1856. The total number of secular clergy is 132, and of regulars 22. There are 14 convents, with 196 members, 5
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monastic houses, and 4 Christian Brothers’ establishments. The total number of churches and chapels is 122.
Ossory, which is united to Ferns in the Protestant arrange ments, is a diocese by itself in the Roman Catholic system. The present bishop is the Right Rev. Dr. Edward Walsh, consecrated in 1840. He resides in Kilkenny, just opposite his new cathedral, in a modest sort of manse, such as a country rector might occupy; and he is so little mindful of appearances, that he allows the pillars at his gate to be covered with placards, containing announcements of charity sermons, &c., in his churches. There is a college at Kilkenny ‘with 180 students, of whom GO are designed for the priest hood; the number of parish priests is 41, curates GO, regulars 12. There are nine conventual establishments and one Christian Brothers’ establishment, which is a fine new building adjoining the cathedral, and erected by the con tributions of the Young Men’s Catholic Association. The new cathedral is very beautiful indeed ; the magnificent
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tower is too large and lofty in proportion to the length of the nave, but it has a grand effect when seen from a distance. Within, the church is very commodious, and fitted up quite comfortably, Avith sittings for about 1,000 persons, and standing room for about 1,000 more.
The Black Abbey is one of the very few ancient ecclesias tical buildings still in the possession of Roman Catholics. Its property was given to the Corporation, which, till the passing of the Municipal Reform Act, was exclusively Pro testant. Only a portion, however, of this interesting ruin still survives. The abbey was founded in 1225 by the Earl of Pembroke, who was buried there. It belonged to the Dominican order, to which it was restored by the Reform Corporation. The brethren undertook the restoration of the church in such a manner that the whole when complete should be ornamental to the city, and should be a striking monument of the good feeling and liberality of the age. But the attempt to accomplish this object has been a melancholy failure. Very little of it has been in keeping with the original style of the building, while the tawdry decorations
312 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
within are in the worst possible taste, contrasting painfully with the solemn grandeur of the original. This contrast has been heightened to the utmost by the erection of an altar, presented by a wealthy citizen, which cost £500. It is a piece of elaborate finery, which inspires anything but reve rential feeling, and reminds one of the bridal architecture of an artistic confectioner. The restoration of St. Canice is conducted 011 the right principle of making the cathedral as like as possible in every respect to what it was originally. The Dominicans should imitate this good example, if it would not now be a work of supererogation after the erection of the new cathedral. Still, if there was room for the abbey church in old times, there ought to be room for it now. The new cathedral is constructed of the best materials, planned after the finest models, and finished in excellent taste, with out any incongruous ornamentation.
In visiting the towns of Ireland, especially south of Dublin,
we are everywhere struck with the actual and visible
working of the Roman Catholic system. We see the parish
churches, with their square towers or their tall spires pointing
to heaven ; but the Established religion is invisible. The
churches are locked, and access is not to be obtained’ except
by searching for the sexton who keeps the keys, unless in a
few places, which are open for daily service for a couple of
hours in the forenoon, after which the building is hastily
shut up. Not so in the Roman Catholic churches, all of
which are constantly open from morning till night. The
visitor, albeit a heretic, may enter unquestioned, and even,
if he wishes, approach the altar, and examine everything at
his leisure. Nor will he ever find the church empty. Either
there is a priest celebrating mass for a congregation of devout
worshippers, or there is a group kneeling near a confession
box, waiting for their turn to disburden their consciences,
or there are penitents here and there counting their beads
or reading the Penitential Psalms, or “going round the
stations,” in the performance of the penance imposed upon
them — or nearly all these things are going on at the same
time, And what a strange mingling of ranks and classes on
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 31 S
such occasions ! Richly dressed ladies, beautiful girls, ugly starved-looking old women, tottering old men, miserable invalids, cripples, beggars — all are at home there, and all equal before that altar or that confession-box. There are several of these boxes — two, four, or six in a large church, each having the name of the priest who hears confession there — the Rev. John Roche, the Rev. Peter Synnott, the Rev. Thomas Furlong, or the Rev. James Murphy, as the case may be — the penitent being at liberty to choose his or her own confessor. I was greatly struck with the earnestness and prostration of spirit evinced by the poor people in these Roman Catholic places of worship. They never enter the sacred precincts without using the holy water, and making the sign of the Cross, never pass before the altar without kneeling, and I have seen old men and women when leaving the place stoop down and kiss the floor. To these people the priest in the confessional represents the Holy Ghost, and is possessed of the Divine power of remitting or retaining their sins, of binding or loosing their souls, and when he stands upon the altar celebrating mass, and elevates the Host to be adored, they firmly “believe that he holds in his hands the Son of God, the Saviour of the World. They consequently regard him with a feeling of awe, and a spirit of submission of which Protestants have no conception.
There is a good deal of controversy now going on in Ireland on the subject of ritualism in the Established Church. Some of the clergy are endeavouring to compete with the priests in costume, ceremonials, forms, genuflexions, &c. The laity and the majority of the clergy detect under all this an insidious design in the performers to make themselves priests, and to bring in the dogmas which, in the Church of Rome, form an essential part of the sacerdotal system. They may or may not be right in this judgment, but one thing is clear, that without the doctrines the ceremonies are unmeaning.
O
If there be an altar and priest, there should be a sacrifice ; but Protestantism utterly rejects anything of the kind under the Christian dispensation. The Protestant laity of this country have no faith whatever in the sacerdotal pretensions
314 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of those High Church revivalists. The latter may fancy, however, that their services would be more impressive and edifying if conducted with the ceremonial accompaniments used by the Roman Catholic priesthood. They might as rationally suppose that a doctor’s prescription would be more effectual if he wore a black gown or a white surplice, or that it would lose its effect if he visited his patients with a moustache. The real influence of the Protestant clergy must ever depend upon the power of their preaching and teaching, and on the earnestness, consistency, zeal, self-denial, devotediicss, sympathy, and diligence, with which they pro secute the work of the ministry. By no sort of priestly devices, or studied formalities, or ecclesiastical millinery, can they compensate for the absence of these qualities. In the open daylight of Protestantism they need not hope to evade the realities and responsibilities of their position by wrap ping themselves up in sacerdotal vestments, turning their backs on the congregation, or veiling themselves in clouds of incense.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 315
CHAPTER XVI.
THE Bishop of Cashel presides over four dioceses — Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore. Cash el and Emly, which were united centuries ago, include a large part of the county Tipperary, and some portion of the county Limerick — an. area of 705,109 acres. The total number of benefices, includ ing 18 suspended, 3 impropriate, and 3 perpetual cures, is 75, of which the “bishop has the patronage of 51, and the Crown 8. The united diocese of Waterford and Lismore includes the whole of the county Waterford, with part of the county of Tipperary, and lias an area of 64-0,660 statute acres. The total number of benefices is 75, including 13 suspended, 4 impropriate, and 3 perpetual curacies. Of these the bishop has the patronage of 30, the Crown 12, incumbents 4, Trinity College 1, and laymen 12. Thus we see that the bishop of these united dioceses has the absolute appointment to no less than eighty-five Church livings — a tremendous responsibility for the State to impose upon one man. There is in these dioceses the usual number of dignitaries. At Cashel there is a dean, a precentor, a chancellor, a treasurer, an arch deacon, and four or live prebendaries. At Emly a dean, a precentor, an archdeacon, a chancellor, and prebendaries. At Waterford a dean, a precentor, a chancellor, a treasurer, and an archdeacon. At Lismore a dean, a precentor, a chancellor, a treasurer, an archdeacon, prebendaries, and vicars-choral. Altogether, about a score dignitaries, without including the prebendaries. The gross income of the bishop is £5,109; net, £4,402.
The framers of the Church Temporalities Act, when abolishing the Archbishopric of Cashel, and uniting the diocese to Waterford, on the death of the incumbent of one of them, left it optional with the survivor to reside either at Cashel or Waterford, and it is to be presumed that the
316 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
bishops were also consulted with reference to the title which he was to Lear. Waterford was selected as the residence, because it is an important city, while Cashel is a small inland town. But the name of the latter was preferred, and so the bishop signs “ Robert Cashel” instead of” Robert Waterford,” which is not so euphonious, but Emly is a prettier name than either, though in ancient times it was called Iinleach, which the English, who never could manage to pronounce the Celtic guttural, softened into Imolie, and gradually shortened into Emly. There could be no objection to the title on the score of antiquity, for the see is said to have been once an archbishopric, founded by St. Patrick, and the place was noticed by some eminent historians as in their time a large and flourishing city, situated on the border of a lake which covered 200 acres, and it could boast a line of sixty-one bishops down to Raymond de Burgh in 1502. But it Avas united to Cashel soon after that, and as the latter place had been renowned as a royal residence for centuries before the Reformation, Emly, which had dwindled into a mere village, was thrown into the shade. It is situated in the same part of the country six or seven miles from the town of Tipperary.
Lismore, which has also a pleasant sound, is not without claims to give the title to the bishop on many accounts, and if counsel could be heard on its behalf, much might be said in defence of its rights. As for its natural beauties, they are scarcely to be surpassed. The tourist who approaches it with the highest expectations, will admit that they are more than realized. It is situated upon, the steep and rocky banks of the Black water, the most picturesque river in Ireland. It flows through one of the most verdant of valleys, in some places thickly covered, in others thinly shaded, Avith wood, with magnificent single trees, the growth of centuries, and here and there groups so happily disposed as to produce the finest possible effects. Then there is the castle, gray and massive, with its ivy-grown towers, all kept in perfect repair. Every visitor has been in raptures with the views from the castle. The lovers of the picturesque seem to have nothing
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 317
more to wish for when they con template the scenes presented on every side by the still river — here brightening in sun shine, there reposing in the shade, and again dashing over the salmon weirs; — the deep woods, the green slopes, the jutting heads of moss-clad rocks, relieving the variegated foliage ; the vast extent of rich country, giving the impression of a splendid picture, realizing all the vivid colouring, and contrasts, and mingling shades, which the imagination of a. painter can conceive, while in front is the mountain of Knockmeledown, towering above a range of lofty hills which stretches away to the eastward. On the right is the town of Cappoquin, with its church spire rising above the trees, and the Blackwater, flowing down in the midst of beautifully ornamented demesnes, surrounding tine baronial residences. Lisinore was once an important city, crowded with famous ecclesiastical edifices. It had a castle, founded by King John in 1185. That was demolished by the Irish enemy ; another was erected in its place, which became the residence of the bishops. But it was alienated by Miler Magrath, one of those bishops, to Sir Walter Raleigh, at the annual rent of £13 (>#., and from him passed into the hands of Sir Richard Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, and the castle was inhabited from lO-t-5 to 1753 by the Boyle family. In that year, on the death of the fourth earl, it passed, along with the greater part of his Irish and English estates, to his daughter, the Lady Charlotte Boyle, who had been married to William Cavendish, fourth Duke of Devonshire. In this castle was born the celebrated philosopher Robert Boyle, and asso ciated with its history as sojourners there are the names of James II., Lord Clarendon, and other celebrities. The Duke of Devonshire found the place a miserable, neglected village, with no other traces of its ancient magnificence than the ruins of its cathedral and its castle. But now, under the fostering care, excellent taste, and wise liberality of its princely proprietor, it has become one of the nicest towns in Ireland, so improved and beautified as to be in some measure worthy of the glorious scenery that surrounds it. None of the wretched mud cabins are to be seen which disfkmre the
318 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
outskirts of other towns, presenting a painful contrast to contiguous grandeur. The castle also is thoroughly reno vated. The rooms are fitted up with all the conveniences of modern improvements, the doors and floors being made of thick Irish oak, and the drawing-rooms ornamented with the most costly tapestry. One of the towers was retained in its rude dilapidated state, serving as a contrast to heighten the effect of the improvements, which combine the luxuries of the present day with the romantic interest of an ancient historic castle. What a pleasant life the old bishops and their gifted successors, the Boyles, had at Lismore ! But to imagine it fully the reader should stand, as I have done, in one of the towers, and look down upon the rich and exquisitely beautiful landscape, especially upon the river that flows under the castle walls, and see, as I have seen, on a fine suumier evening, sixty or seventy magnificent salmon •d alive into the Duke’s boat iVom one net. This fishery, by the way, as a source of income has been greatly di minished in consequence of the recent destruction of weirs by order of the Fishery Commissioners under the late Act of Parliament.
It is gratifying to observe the English owners of Irish Church lands at length showing a disposition to do some thing for the benefit of the country from which they derive their revenues, but even in such cases we cannot altogether forget the means by which those estates were acquired. Let us hear what Archdeacon Cotton has got to say upon this subject. Miler Magrath, already mentioned, who was Arch bishop of Cashel in 1582, held these sees in commendam during the pleasure of Queen Elizabeth. While in this position, he grossly betrayed his trust by alienating the property of the Church as far as lay in his power. “ During this period,” observes the archdeacon, “that improper transaction took place by which Archbishop Magrath, in combination with the Dean and Chapter, alienated for ever the manor and see lands of Lismore, together with the castle, which was the Bishop’s residence, to Sir Walter Raleigh, for the nominal annual rent of £-13 6s. 8d. This Church pro-
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 319
perty soon afterwards — viz., in December, 1602 — fell into the hands of Sir Richard Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, from whom the greater part of it is inherited by the Duke of Devonshire at this day.”
Magrath consecrated Bishop Weatherhead in 1589, and the Archdeacon says, on the authority of one of the Boyles, that “ he followed too closely in the steps of his predecessors in the matter of leasing and alienating the lands of his Church.” But it was not only by getting leases in per petuity of Church lands at nominal rents that the Boyle family enriched themselves in this country. A whole swarm of Boyles came over from England and settled down upon the honey of the Irish Establishment. Archdeacon Cotton records under the date 1619, the appointment as Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, of Michael Boyle, D.D., “ cousin- gerniaii of Richard, first Earl of Cork, brother of Richard, Archbishop of Tuain, and uncle of Michael, Archbishop of Dublin. Coining to Ireland, he was made Dean of Lis more in 1C 14, and soon afterwards, through the Earl’s interest, was advanced to this bishopric by the King’s letter, dated July 9th, 1019. He was also Archdeacon of Cork and Cloyne, Chancellor of Lismore, and Treasurer of Waterford, and appears to have possessed several other pieces of preferment in various baronies at the same time, and this by permission and grant of the King himself.” The Archdeacon gives a long list of offices which the first Earl of Cork — “ this active and far-sighted peer “ — obtained for members of his family, whom he invited over to Ireland, besides the immense property of all kinds which he acquired for himself ; so that, according to his own admission, having come to Dublin with only £29 in his pocket, he at length made himself able to spend £50 a day.” The following is a list of his family who were quartered on the Church : — Thadeus Boyle, Vicar of Kilpatrick, in Meath, succeeded by Nicholas Boyle ; Richard Boyle, who became successively Warden of the College of Youghal, Dean of Waterford, Archdeacon of Limerick, Bishop of Cork, and Archbishop of Tuam j Michael, his brother, Dean of Lismore and Bishop of
320 IRELAND AND HEll CHURCHES.
Waterford; Michael, his nephew, called Michael III., Pre bendary of Cork, Dean of Cloyne, and Rector of Clonpriest — all in the same year — afterwards Rector of Ahern, Chaplain-General of the Forces, Bishop of Cork, Archbishop of Dublin, and Primate of all Ireland. There were ten other Boyles, of the same lucky family, who obtained various preferments too tedious to enumerate, from bishoprics down.* Archdeacon Cotton states that John Atherton, a native of Somersetshire, who became Bishop of Waterford and Lis- niore, had, like his two immediate predecessors, Royal grants to hold other preferments in aid of his sees, which had been grievously impoverished under Archbishop Miler Magrath. He repeatedly endeavoured to recover the Church property which had been alienated and had fallen into lay hands, “but he met with determined opposition from the powerful families then in possession, and his efforts were attended with only partial success.”
Ymighal, a seaport town situated at the month of the Blackwater, also yielded its ecclesiastical property to English adventurers. It had in old times two monasteries, one with an abbey for Dominicans, founded by Thomas Fitzgerald, surnamed The Ape ; and another for Franciscans, founded by Maurice Fitzgerald, and completed by Thomas, his son. It was the oldest Franciscan establishment in the kingdom, and became the burial-place of some distinguished members of the house of Desmond. The collegiate church, which still survives, and part of which is used as a parish church, belonged to one of the great educational establishments which nourished in the Middle Ages. It was founded in 1464 by Thomas, Earl of Desmond, and consisted of a warden, eight fellows, and eight singing men. The collegiate church was a magnificent structure, in the Gothic style, richly ornamented, with a lofty tower on the north side, and consisted of a nave, choir, transept, and north and south aisles. It is an extremely interesting building, and contains many monuments, especially a gorgeous group representing the first Earl of Cork, his two wives, and nine of his * See Cotton’s “Fasti,” vol. i., p. 126.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 321
children, and covered with heraldic devices. The church had large revenues and privileges, the latter confirmed by several Popes. The wardenship, which was a, sort of bishopric, survived the Reformation. The estates were granted to Sir Walter Raleigh, who resided in a curious old mansion adjoining the church. It still survives, and is inhabited. The college was occupied for some time by Sir George Carew, the conqueror of Munster. Sir Walter Raleigh obtained the greater part of the territory of the Earl of Desmond, forfeited in consequence of his rebellion. He sold those estates to the Earl of Cork, who also purchased up the interests of other parties in the town of Youghal ; but being charged with obtaining some of the property unfairly, he was lined .-£15,000 by the award of the Lord Deputy Strafford. The college has been rendered classic ground by the residence of Sir Walter Raleigh, who planted some trees, which still survive, and by the fact that the poet Spenser is said to have composed there, or at least recited to his friend Sir Walter, some portions of the “ Fairy Queen.” This property also ultimately passed into the hands of the Duke of Devonshire, who did not seem to take much interest in the old, decayed town. It is a singular fact in the history of the place, that the Youghal estate, with the house of Sir Walter Raleigh, and another old mansion adjoining, was purchased a few years ago by Mr. Lewis, of London, who commenced the work of renovation by getting a railway constructed from Cork, causing marine villas to be built along the shore, and making other improvements, which were all unfortunately cut short by his bankruptcy.
Waterford, the present head-quarters of the United diocese, is one of the most celebrated of the Irish cities, and one of the earliest occupied by the Danes. It had the usual number of ecclesiastical establishments, all amply endowed — the Abbey of St. Catherine, the Augustinian Monastery, the Priory of St. John the Evangelist occupied by Bene dictine monks, the Dominican Friary of St. Saviour, the Holy Ghost Hospital, the cathedral, &c. ; nearly all the property of which passed into lay hands. All those insti-
322 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
tutions, dignities, powers, and privileges, which formerly were part and parcel of the State Church in that quarter, under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope — at least, all that have survived the revolutionary wreck caused by the Reformation and the civil wars, are now invested in the person of Dr. Daly, who was born in 1783, and is, therefore, eighty-four years of a<2fe. Consecrated in ISio, he has
o t/ */ o
enjoyed his present position for twenty-three years. Ac cording to Sir Bernard Burke, he conies from the ancient family of the O’Daly, which claimed its descent from Nial, of the Nine Hostages, this branch being established in the county Galway, which was represented for many years in the Irish Parliament by the Right Hon. Denis Daly, described by Grattan as one of the best and brightest cha racters that Ireland ever produced. He married the only daughter of Lord Fariiham, descended from the Maxwells, a royal race of Scotland, who left two sons — James, created Baron Dunsandle and Clanconell, and Robert, the Bishop of Cashel and Waterford. The former left a numerous family; the latter is still a bachelor, who seems to have made it the great object of his life to leave the family estates worthy of their lineage, and to enrich his nieces and nephews. The Rev. Robert Daly was early in life appointed Rector of Powerscourt. His aristocratic connexions, and the estima tion in which everybody held Lady Powerscourt — who was eminently distinguished by her benevolence, piety, and zeal, and who regarded Mr. Daly as her spiritual director — gave him vast influence amongst the clergy in those days. His relative, Lord Farnham, was active in promoting the “ New Reformation,” which preceded the Emancipation Act, and was intended to prevent that measure. Mr. Daly was one of the most energetic leaders of the anti-Popery movement, and being a man of strong will, positive, prompt, and dic tatorial, he became not only primus inter pares among the Evangelical clergy, but ultimately assumed the position and bearing of a Protestant Pope. When he spoke, everybody was to acquiesce ; no dissent was tolerated. At that time clerical meetings and conferences were numerous, not only
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 323
in Dublin, but in various places throughout the country. The Kev. Robert Daly, of Powerscourt, was everywhere, and wherever he appeared he was master. Discussions went on freely amongst the clergy, each giving his opinion without fear, till the Rector of Powerscourt arrived. The moment he entered the room, every one was silent, and humbly listened to the oracle. Now this oracle, unfortunately, happened to be one of the most narrow-minded, bigoted, and intolerant men in the Irish Church. Not a drop of national blood seemed to have come into his veins either from the O’Dalys of Gal way, or the Maxwells of Scotland. Irish Toryism, pure and simple, hatred of Popery, which nothing could mollify, hostility to all sorts of liberalism, which nothing could conciliate, invincible dislike of any man, especially of any clergyman, who dissented from his opinions — these were and are the leading characteristics of the minister whom Earl de Grey appointed to rule over the Established Clergy in the four dioceses of Cashel, Waterford, Emly, and Lismore, making him sole patron of eighty or ninety livings, and placing more than a hundred educated gentlemen and their families to a great extent at his mercy. The Protestant Cathedral of Waterford has very little of the cathedral style about it. It is like a good large old parish church in a third-rate English town. The nave is simply a square entrance-hall, under the tower, with some monuments on the walls. The chancel and aisles are all pewed, the galleries being supported by square pillars, on which rest round pillars supporting the roof, with stucco capitals ; the ceiling is richly ornamented, and the church altogether is commodious and cheerful. It is quite evident that those by whom the internal arrangements were planned were not High Churchmen ; for nothing could be more offensive to the taste of such men than the way in which the altar is overshadowed by an immense pulpit and reading- desk, standing right in front of it, and obstructing the view of the worshippers. For this elevation of the pulpit above the altar there is, however, some compensation to High Anglicans in a large “ glory “ over the Communion-table,
Y2
324 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
with I. N. R I. in golden letters, and above it an arch or canopy, supported by handsome pillars. To the right of the pulpit is the Bishop’s throne, under a canopy.
The old cathedral, or rather the oldest part of the first cathedral of Waterford, was built in 1096, by the Ostmen, on their conversion from Paganism ; and about two centuries later it was endowed by King John, a dean and chapter having been appointed under the sanction of Innocent III. Endowments of various kinds had accumulated from age to age, till the Reformation, when the old altars were thrown down and the ornaments defaced. During the rebellions and wars that followed, its most costly treasures were carried away, with the brass ornaments of the tombs, the great standing pelican which supported the Bible, the immense candlesticks, six or seven feet high, the great brazen font, which was ascended by three stairs, made of solid brass, and various gold and silver-gilt vessels. In 1773 the dean and chapter pronounced the old building so much decayed as to be unsafe for public worship, and unfortunately resolved that the whole pile should be taken down and replaced by a new edifice. Out of the materials of its Gothic arches, its pointed windows, and its massive walls, was constructed the present light and beautiful building, entirely in the modern style. The total length is 170 feet, and its breadth 58 feet. On each side of the grand entrance are the vestry and the consistorial court, over which are apartments for a library. There is a lofty ornamented steeple rising from the same end. In 1815 an accidental fire broke out in the organ-loft, destroying the ceiling of the church, most of the woodwork, and also a magnificent organ, which, thirty-five years before, had cost £1,200. Three years after, the church was fully repaired, and restored to its original beauty.
There arc two other churches in Waterford — St. Olave’s, which is very ancient, situated iicai* the cathedral, and St. Patrick’s, which stands on elevated ground to the west of the city. There is also a quiet church at the opposite side of the river, near the ferry. The bishop’s palace is a substan tial, handsome building of hewn stone, the front towards the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 325
Mall being ornamented with a fine Doric portico and enriched cornice. It is situated in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, and as it is in the heart of the city, only a small plot of ground belongs to it ; the see lands, however, comprise 8,000 acres. The chapter consists of a dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, and archdeacon. But, strange to say, there is no choral service. Divine worship is conducted exactly as in the plainest rural church, with not the least attempt at chaunting or singing the responses. In fact, Protestantism appears in this cathedral as plain and bald as the most Puritan worshippers could desire, shorn of every thing like ornament, with no beauty in its form, and no music in its voice, relying altogether 011 the simple power of the Gospel, — which, I believe, is faithfully preached by the clergy connected with the place, though I had no opportunity of judging for myself; for when I was there, the pulpit was occupied by the handsome and fluent travelling secretary of the Jews’ Society, the Rev. Mr. Brennan. The corps of the deanery of Waterford, which is in the gift of the Crown, consists of the parishes of Trinity Within and Without, St. Michael, and St. Olave, the rectory of Kilcarragh, and parts of Kilburn, Kilmeadan, and Reisk. There are two glebes in the union, one of 17 acres, and another of 317. St. Olave’s Church was built in 1734, and is remarkable for its pulpit and the bishop’s throne, which are composed of black oak, handsomely carved.
The diocese of Waterford itself is but small, the number of benefices being only twelve, and the net income of the clergy £2,635. The total population is 43,506, of which 2,943 belong to the Established Church, and 39,472 to the Roman Catholic Church. Thus the proportions are nearly fourteen to one. The great majority of the Protestant population reside in the city. The benefice of Killoteraii has ten members of the Church, and the chancellorship of Waterford, with four parishes, has seventeen.
The diocese of Lismore is vastly more extensive than that of Waterford, the area being 573,803 acres to 66,875. The total population of this diocese is 145,265, of which 4,775
326 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
belong to the Established, and 139,769 to the Roman Catholic Church, so that the proportion is about thirty-four to one. The total population of the diocese of Cashel is 121,011, of which 4,721 are members of the Established Church, and 114,831 Roman Catholics, the latter being in the proportion of about twenty-eight to one. The total population of Emly is 62,196, of which 1.414 are members of the Established Church, and 60,707 Roman Catholics, or about one to sixty. The total number of Protestants in the four dioceses subject to the authority of Bishop Daly is 13,653, while the Roman Catholics are 354,779, the propor tion being one member of the Established Church to twenty- six Roman Catholics. It is to be remarked that in these dioceses the Established Church is almost exclusively the Church of the gentry, and the Roman Catholic Church the Church of the working classes and the poor. For the reli gions wants of the 354,779 comparatively poor Roman Catholics no provision is made by the State. For the spiritual benefit of the 13,653 comparatively wealthy Protestants the following provision is made :— There is one bishop, with a net income of £4,40*2 ; there are four deans, four archdeacons, and four cathedral staffs. There are in Cashel forty-two beneficed clergymen, with a net income of £13,499. There are in Emly twenty-nine beneficed clergymen, with a net income of £5,595. There are in Waterford twelve beneficed clergymen, with a net income of £2,635.. There are in Lismore fifty-two beneficed clergymen, with a net income of £9, 542. Thus we have 135 beneficed clergymen receiving annually revenue amounting to £31,271, free of all charges, for ministering to the spiritual wants of 13,653 Protestants of all ages, which gives to each clergyman an annual income of <£J236, and an average congregation of 101 persons, including infants, or £2 7s. Sd. per annum a head.
But these figures only partially reveal the anomalies of the present system. From the returns to an order of the House of Commons, obtained by Captain Stacpoole in 1864, I have constructed the following tables, giving in the first column the name of the benefice, in the second the number
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS.
327
of parishes composing it, in the third the number of members of the Established Church which the parish or union contains, in the fourth the amount of net income enjoyed by the incumbents, and in the fifth the total population.
CASHEL AND EMLY.
Name of Benefice.
No. of Parishes.
No. of Members of Established
Net Income.
Total Popula
Church.
tion.
Knockgraffon,
2
40
£ 576
“‘““1,842
Clonoulty, ....
1
42
281
2,139
Athassel, ....
3
107
541
3,345
7
192
985
5,972
Kilvemnon, ....
1
62
368
3,092
Killenaulo, ....
8
155
762
4,893
Prebend of Fermor,
1
61
340
1,281
,, Kilbragh, .
2
50
373

Moyne, ....
2
41
364
1,451
Thurlcs, ....
4
207
823
7,577
Templeree, ....
1
9
156
802
Glankeen, ....
1
52
369
3,859
Prebend of Killandry, .
1
7
291
963
Cullen, .....
4
50
372
3,778
Archdeaconry of Emly,
3
14
346

St. John’s, Newport, . •.
O
90
606
5,836
Kilmastulla, ....
2
53
554
2,611
Chantorship of Emly, .
3
35
331
.
Ballinlonxhy,
2
28
3)0
4,328
Kilbehenny, ....
1
16
299
2,348
Emly, .....
1
31
119
2,551
Cahircorney,
2
2
66
1,131
Anev, .....
7
30
398
7,076
Total, . . 23
62
1,374
£9,630
66,875
From this table it appears that there are twenty-three incumbents in the diocese of Cashel and Emly, who receive annually the sum of £9,630 for ministering to 1,374 mem bers of the Established Church. The subjoined is a similar table for Waterford and Lismore : —
[TABLE.
328
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
WATERFORD AND LISMORE.
Name of Benefice.
No. of Parishes.
No. of Members of Established
Net Income.
Total Po[.ula-
Church.
tion.
Killoteran, ....
1
10
£ 116
417
Ballynakill, ....
4
94
182
2,054
Affane, ....
2
93
234
3,505
Modcligo, .... Ardmore, ....
2 2
6
85
135
458
1,481
4,978
Tcmplemichael, .
2
6,5
237
2,071
Lisgenaul, ....
1
13
149
1,223
Hossrnire, ....
2
18
183
2,376
Fenough, ....
1
12
145
782
Prebend of Mora, .
1
3
1 93
414
Mothel
1
27
405
4.342
Kilsheelan, ....
1
21
186
1 ^435
Derrygrath, ....
1
13
254
757
Lisronagh, ....
1
9
1 95
519
Outragh, ....
2
10
197
537
Tubrid, ....
3
21
400
4,692
Templetenny,
1
3
139
3,967
Ardfinan, ....
3
42
247
1,320
Total, . .18
31
544
£4,115
36,870
From this table it appears that there are in the united diocese of Waterford and Lismore 18 incumbents minister ing to 544 members of the Established Church, for which they receive annually the sum of 0^4,115. The previous table for Cashel and Emly shows that the average income of each incumbent is £239 6s. 2t?. The average number of church members, including children for each benefice, is seventy-eight, the annual cost per head being £3 Is. 2^d., or at the rate of £15 6s. O^d. for each family. The results for Waterford and Lismore are still more astounding. In 18 benefices the number of members of the Established Church of all ages is only 544, while the total amount of revenue is £4,115, giving to each incumbent an annual in come of £228 12*. for ministering to thirty souls, which is something over £7 10s. per head, or £%7 10s, per family. In the former united diocese the proportion of Protestants to the whole population is 1 to 20^, and in the latter ] to 48|.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 329
In looking through the clerical lists given in the “ Irish Church Directory” for the four united dioceses ruled by Bishop Daly, I note a surprising paucity of curates. In the diocese of Waterford there are only four, two of whom are set down twice each for different parishes, the Eev. John Derenzy and the Rev. Thomas Gimlette, the latter gentle man being also classed among the incumbents for the Crown living of Kilderan. Two of the curacies are marked vacant. If they were filled up, there would be only six curates in the whole diocese of Waterford. In the diocese of Lismore, with fifty-three benefices, extending over a vast territory, there are only twenty-seven curates, of whom four or five do duty each in two parishes. In the diocese of Cashel and Emly, with seventy-five benefices, there are but thirty-five curates. Of these ten do duty in two parishes each, and one, the Rev. Richard Toppin, who must be almost a ubi quitous individual, is curate of three parishes, and incumbent of a fourth. How he manages to do duty in the four parishes is a matter which, no doubt, the bishop is able to explain. Another of the curates, the Rev. John Swayne, A.M., is also incumbent of two distinct parishes, Megorban and Loughmo, so that he has to do duty in three places. The other incumbents, who are also curates, are the Rev. G. Peacocke, the Rev. M. L. Apjohn, and the Rev. W. Baker. The number of “ suspended “ livings in these dioceses is also very large: ten in Cashel, eight in Emly, six in Waterford, and six in Lismore — thirty altogether. The process of suspension results from the absence of divine worship, and this in the majority of cases from the want of worshippers. If this principle of retrenchment, as applied to the parochial system, be a sound one, it is plain from the foregoing tables that it might be carried a great deal farther, and that a very large amount of church property now running to waste might thus be saved for districts where there are Protestants to be instructed, and ministers ill paid.
“ Let me have men about me that are fat 1” exclaimed Julius CiBsar. The Bishop of Cashel, it would seem, re verses the motto, and says, “ Let me have men about me
330 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
that are lean.” But the lean men whom he loves to have about him are not those who think too much, but those who think very little, or not at all, in a sense different from his own way of thinking. Instead of availing himself of the power which the law gives, through the Lord Lieutenant and the Privy Council, of grouping together small livings and forming good centres of Protestantism, thus affording each incumbent a position of independence and social in fluence as a country gentleman, with curates to do the duty in remote stations, his policy has been to dissolve existing unions and split them up into the smallest possible incum bencies, not capable of supporting a family respectably, to which he appoints a number of poor struggling ministers, and by these means he multiplies an impoverished clergy, lowering thereby immensely the social status of the Estab lished Church in those districts. The clergy complain that as soon as a union becomes vacant, the Bishop takes the train to Dublin, hurries to the Castle and gets the Order in Council, by which he has at his disposal two, three, or four livings, instead of one, and the whole thing is done before they know anything about it. In this manner he enlarges vastly the field of his patronage, and multiplies the number of incumbents of small mental calibre in his diocese. Like Continental despots, his policy appears to be to break down everything that would be likely to resist his own absolute domination. There are eighty-three livings in the gift of this Bishop, some of them of great value — an amount of patronage which, with the exception of Armagh, is about the greatest in Ireland. There are, however, in the united diocese nearly seventy parishes without curates; yet, with so many prizes, Bishop Daly seems to have found the greatest difficulty in obtaining men of education and inde pendence of mind to take service in the Church under his authority. Perhaps he does not want to have such men in the diocese. This might be inferred from the proofs he is said to give of domineering temper, to which no educated man of independence would submit if he could possibly avoid such humiliating servitude, so utterly repugnant to the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 331
spirit of Protestantism. Hence, in order to fill vacancies, his lordship has been driven to the necessity of ordaining men without an. academic education ; and, as a matter of fact, he has “laid hands suddenly” on more “literates” than all the other Irish bishops put together. Some of these rough-and-ready candidates for holy orders were from the army, some from the counting-house desk, some from the apothecary’s shop, some from the ranks of lay preachers of various dissenting sects, some from the Metropolitan Hall in Dublin, some returned emigrants, and one a member of the swell mob. The history of the last case is quite a romance of imposture. By forged testimonials, a loud profession of unctuous piety, and fawning manners, the accomplished reprobate persuaded Bishop Daly to ordain him. After plvino- his oriolnal trade for some time under the clerical
AT «/ O O
mask, he went to England, and by the same arts, that is, by forging testimonials and making lying professions, he im posed on a number of clergymen, and got into the most respectable social circles, in each of which he went on order ing goods and borrowing money till he was found out. Then he absconded, but turned up very soon again in a new sphere, with a fresh batch of testimonials. At last he was informed on by an old accomplice, while officiating as curate of a fashionable church in London. Most of the literates have left the diocese soon after their ordination, in the hope of getting a better social position; but some few were made permanent by great promotion, while the ablest and most learned men in the diocese, who prepared for their profession by a costly university education, have been sent by the present bishop into the remotest parishes, and to minister to the smallest congregations. The more prominent positions, and the larger fields for usefulness, at his lordship’s disposal, are occupied by men of no ability or standing. Some of these were followers and admirers connected with the bishop in the county of Wicklow. In the case of these clerical im migrants from Wicklow it is said that the bishop consider ately departs from his usual objectionable practice of dividing the living into fragments, and creating miserable benefices
332 IRELAND AXD HER CHURCHES.
without parishioners. For them he preserves unions worth from ,£700 to ,£1,000 a year.
In the returns ordered by the House of Commons in 1804, I find that there are twenty-three incumbents in these united dioceses holding important and well-paid benefices, “ non-resident by consent of the bishop.” I learn that to this number may now be added the incumbents of Moyne, Ballybrood, Kilwartermory, Newcastle, Rathronan, and others. Some of these clergymen are travel] ing on the Continent, some serving curacies in the county Louth, some in England, some twenty miles distant from their own parishes in the diocese itself, some mana’-in^ farms, and
1 O O
engaged as land agents, and some whose occupation is not known, nor even their address in the parishes from which they derive their incomes. Thus, then, it appears that this united diocese is to a great extent a mass of glaring abuses ; and it is hard to avoid agreeing with those clergy who regard the bishop under whose administration they exist as inflicting more grievous damage 011 the Irish Church and on the cause of Protestantism than all those who attack the Estab lishment, either in Parliament or the press. If there be sincere Protestants who hold that it is sacrilege to lay a reforming hand upon this system, in order to bring it into something like harmony with the principles of common honesty, not to speak of Christian truth and equity, they are persons upon whom argument would be wasted.*
* The foregoing portion of this report on the Irish Bishoprics appeared in the London Review from January to June last year. What follows is printed now for the first time.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 333
CHAPTER XVII.
THE See of Cork is believed to have been founded in the early part of the seventh century by St. Barr, or Finbarr, who is supposed to have been a native of Connaught, and preceptor of Column, the founder of the see of Cloyne. Tradition says that he had been a hermit, and was taken from his cell “ to iill the first episcopal chair at Cork.” But very little is known about him or his successors till the middle of the twelfth century. At various times this bishopric was held in conjunction with Cloyne or Ross, or both. The see of Ross has been united to it since the year 1583 ; and by the Church Temporalities Act of 1834, the see of Cloyne was also permanently annexed. The diocese of Cork contains an area of 059,000 statute acres. It has 58 benefices, with 10 perpetual and district cures — total, 74 livings. Cloyne contains 830,000 acres, and has a total of 93 livings. Ross has 254,000 acres, and a total of 25 livings. The whole area of the united dioceses is embraced within the vast county of Cork, which is divided into two ridings. The number of curates is, in Cork 42, in Cloyne 27, and in Ross 7. The net value of the see is only £2,304, but the patronage in the hands of the bishop is very extensive — 42 livings in Cork, 07 in Cloyne, and 19 in Ross ; 128 altogether. Each of the three dioceses has preserved its cathedral staff — a dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, archdeacon and prebendaries. Cork shared, to a large extent, the fortunes of Minister, and was involved, more or less, in the vicissitudes occasioned by the civil wars. It has long maintained the position of the second city in Ireland. Our business, however, is not with its civil history, but with its position in the ecclesias tical establishment of the country. There are some interesting matters in the records of the see which may be briefly alluded to as illustrating the state of society in old
334 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
times. In 1292 Bishop Robert M’Donagh was twice fined £130 for presuming to entertain pleas in the ecclesiastical courts for matters belonging to the Crown. In 1324 Philip of Slarie was sent as an ambassador to the Pope by Edward II. On his return, an assembly of bishops was held, at which it was resolved to bring the powers of the Church to bear in support of the civil government, so that ail the king’s enemies, and all disturbers of the public peace, should be excommunicated. It was also resolved to eject the native clergy, as far as possible, from their livings, and to consoli date small bishoprics by adding them to others, in order that the Anglo-Irish prelates might have sufficient incomes to support the episcopal dignity. In pursuance of this policy, Pope Martin V. united Cork and Cloyne in 1430, both being vacant at the time. During the period between the English rmeiit and the Reformation, the native prelates in this part of tho country, as well as elsewhere, were abbots and priors — ‘not diocesan bishops. But within the pale, and wherever the English power extended, the hierarchical arrangements of the Church of Rome prevailed. Dominiek Tirrey was bishop at the time of the Reformation, and held the see twenty years, during which the Pope nominated two other bishops of Cork, neither of whom took possession. Bishop Sheyn, appointed by Elizabeth in 1572, was so ardent a reformer that he burned the images of the saints. In 1582, when Elizabeth annexed Ross to Cork and Cloyne, Bishop Lyon reported that the bishopric of Cloyne was granted by his predecessor in fee-farm at five marks ; that Cork and Ross, when he came into possession, were worth only o£?70 per annum, but that he had improved them to £200 per annum ; that he built a mansion-house at Ross, at an expense at least of oC300, which in about three years after was burned down by the rebel O’Donovan ; that he found no episcopal house at Cork, but that he built one, which cost him at least o£l,000 ; and that he never was in possession of the house belonging to the bishopric of Cloyne, which was withheld from him by Sir John FitzEdmund Fitzgerald in his lifetime, and since his death by his heir.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 335
The following record is found in the original minute-book of a royal commission, issued in 1570, now remaining in the Exchequer office, Dublin : — “ Richard Dixon, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne, was sentenced to do public penance in Christ Church, Dublin, during divine service on Sunday, but did it in hypocrisy and pretence of amendment. Therefore the Commissioners, 011 7 November, 1571, proceeded, after full proof and examination had, to deprive him of his see, for having married a woman of bad character, one Ann Goole of Cork, while his lawful wife, Margaret Palmer, by whom he had children, was living, and for having, after this, attempted by letters to induce another respectable young lady to bo married to him.”*
Bishop Lyon was succeeded by John Richard Boyle, who became Archbishop of Tuam. While he occupied the see of Cork he is said to have repaired more rubious churches and consecrated more new ones than any other bishop of that age. He was succeeded by Dr. Chappel, and after Chappel came his son, Michael Boyle, concerning whom Bishop Downes has the following notice in a MS. diary preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin : — “ When Bishop Michael Boyle was here he lived in the city. The bishop and mayor used to come to St. Barry’s Church together. When they came to the middle part of the eastern stone bridge, the bishop took the right hand of the mayor, and the sword and other ensigns were left in Alderman Field’s house at the foot of the bridge till they returned from church. Captain Hayes says that he has seen this twenty times done.” Arch deacon Cotton explains this etiquette by stating that St. Finbarr’s Church, the cathedral, is not in the city, but in the Bishop’s Liberty, and was therefore beyond the mayor’s jurisdiction. The same is the case in Kilkenny and other cathedral towns.
Dr. Downes, an Englishman, ancestor of the late Lord
Downes, succeeded to this see in 1C99. He had been a
Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and Archdeacon of Dublin,
where he died, and was buried at St. Andrew’s. He is said
* Cotton, vol. v. p. 32.
336 IRELAND AXD HER CHURCHES.
to have been a man of learning, but he has left no literary remains except a MS. journal of a tour through the dioceses of Cork and Ross, which is preserved in the Trinity College Library.
Dr. Peter Brown, Provost of Trinity College, who ruled the diocese from 1709 to 1735, was an improving bishop. Through his exertions several churches and glebe-houses were built or repaired. A public library was founded, and more tha:i £2,000 was spent .011 a country house at Bishops- town, near Cork, with a demesne of 118 acres belonging to the see. Dr. Robert Clayton succeeded in 1735 — an English man — who had also been Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He bore the character of a munificent, learned, and high spirited man, and was an author of some distinction ; but the Arianism of his writings was so palpable and offensive, that an ecclesiastical commission was appointed to bring him to trial, a proceeding which so alarmed him that he got an attack of fever, of which he died. He was, followed by Jemet Browne, who has left no traces of his existence but a “Fast Sermon.” Isaac Maim, a native of Norwich, who had been Archdeacon of Dublin, was appointed to this see in 1772. He is the author of n familiar exposition of the Church Catechism, which has been frequently reprinted by tii:.1 Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. Another
Englishman came after him, Dr. Euseby Cleaver, brother of
j
the Bishop of Chester. He remained in Cork only a few months, having been translated first to Ferns, and then to Dublin. William Foster, who succeeded him, was son of the Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer. He was translated from this poor see first to Kilmore, and then to Clogher, where he died, in 1 797. Dr. Bennett, the next Bishop of Cork, was nephew of Lord Westmoreland, then Lord Lieu tenant of Ireland. He was succeeded in 1794 by the Hon. Thomas Stopford, son of the Earl of Courtown. He died in 1805, and was succeeded by Lord John George Beresford, who had been ordained to the office of deacon in St. Kevin’s, Dublin, only ten years before, but he was third son of the first Marquis of Waterford — a scion of the great house of
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 337
Beresford, then the most powerful in Ireland. For a member of such a family the see of Cork was too poor, and in two years after his consecration he was translated to Raphoe, where he remained seventeen years, and he was again translated to the higher see of Clogher. But he was there only a single year, if so much, when he was translated a third time to the archiepiscopal see of Dublin. It might be supposed that the object of his friends, then considered the greatest friends of the Church, was to consult her interests, by placing so good and wise a prelate in the metropolis, where he could exert a greater amount of influence in favour of the Protestant cause. But this supposition proved to be unfounded, for the youthful prelate was not two years in Dublin when he was advanced to the Primacy, with about double the amount of revenue, and not half the amount of responsibility.
The next Bishop of Cork was the Honorable Thomas St. Lawrence, second son of the first Earl of Howth. Not so fortunate as some of his predecessors, he remained upon this episcopal stepping-stone till his death, in 1831.
The Dublin University had now its turn once more, and its Provost, Dr. Kyle was appointed to this see in 1831. Archdeacon Cotton testifies that Bishop Kyle was “a good scholar, a man of generous feelings and active habits of business ; most diligent in superintending the concerns of his important dioceses, which he conducted in such a manner as to gain general respect and esteem.” He died in 1848, and was followed by Dr. James Wilson, a native of Newry, who owed his advancement to his own talents, and their recognition by Archbishop Whately. He had been a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and precentor of St. Patrick’s. Bishop Wilson died at Cork in 1857, aged 78, and was buried in the cathedral. He was succeeded by Dr. William Fitzgerald, the present Bishop of Killaloe, who was formerly a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and Professor of Moral Philosophy and Ecclesiastical History in the University. He was translated to Killaloe in 1862, and was succeeded by the present bishop, Dr. Gregg.
338 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
The old cathedral has been pulled down, and a new one is being erected upon the same site. The demolition has excited but little regret. Excepting the tower, a pointed doorway, and a few other remains of the ancient cathedral, that structure, which was a plain, massive, heavy, oblong pile, dates no farther back than 1735. It was erected from a tax imposed by Parliament of one shilling in the ton upon all coal and culm consumed within the city. Totally devoid of architectural ornaments, and utterly unworthy of such a city as Cork, the interior was distinguished from an ordinary parish church only by the Bishop’s throne and the stalls of the dignitaries. The episcopal palace, which was built by Bishop Mann, is a large, handsome, square edifice, fronting the west end of the cathedral. The city formerly possessed numerous monastic institutions, among which may be mentioned the Abbey of St. Fmbarr, the Gray Friary, the Abbey of St. Mary of the Island, an Augustiniaii friary, the church of which had an east window 50 feet by 30; the nunnery of St. John the Baptist, the priory of St. Stephen, for the support of lepers, etc. The following are the names of the parishes connected with the city : — St. Finbarr, a rectory, in which stands the cathedral, and which contains portions of the suburbs. In 1834 the parishioners consisted of 1,820 Church people, 48 Presbyterians, 74 other Protestant Dissenters, and 12,712 Roman Catholics. St. Anne Shaiidon is situated partly in the city and partly in the barony of Cork. In 1834 the parishioners consisted of 3,551 members of the Established Church, 19 Presbyterians, 169 other Protestant Dissenters, and 20,480 Roman Catholics. St. Mary Shandon is also partly in the city and partly in the barony of Cork. The Census of 1834 showed that the religious denominations numbered respectively, 1,666 Epis copalians, 84 Presbyterians, 63 other Protestant Dissenters, and 13,683 Roman Catholics. St. Nicholas in the same year contained 2,321 Episcopalians, 57 Presbyterians, 30 other Protestant Dissenters, and 14,774 Roman Catholics. St. Paul’s, which lies wholly within the city, had 936 Church members, 61 Presbyterians, 68 other Protestant Dissenters,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 339
and 4,089 Roman Catholics. St. Peter’s also lies wholly within the city. In 1834 it contained 2,507 Episcopalians, 57 Presbyterians, 77 other Protestant Dissenters, and 5,586 Roman Catholics. Holy Trinity, or Christ Church, had in the same year 2,924 Episcopalians, 49 Presbyterians, 304 other Protestant Dissenters, and 0,459 Roman Catholics.
According to the returns of 1861, the numbers of the Episcopalians and Protestant Dissenters in the above parishes are as follows. The third column, containing the total population, according to the last Census, will show the pro portion of Protestants to Roman Catholics : —
Parishes.
Church Members.
Dissenters.
Total Population.
St. Finbarr,
1,759
188
12,963
St. Anne Shan don,
3,892
837
28,818
St. Mary Shandon,
968
315
14,529
St. Nicholas,
2,260
388
18,240
St. Paul’s,
441
129
4,152
St. Peter’s,
1,197
234
11,887
Holy Trinity,
1,968
401
8,715
Total, . 12,583 2,492 93,304
Add the Church people and Dissenters together, and we shall have the total Protestant population, amounting in round numbers to 15,000, which, deducted from the total population, leaves over 84,000 Roman Catholics, or rather more than five to one of the whole population.
Before proceeding to take a more general view of the united diocese, it may be as well to say a few words con cerning its two other component parts. Cloyne is situated in the county of Cork, near Micldleton and Castlemartyr. It is a small antique-looking place, surrounded by a rich country. The cathedral is a plain, heavy, old cruciform structure, containing monuments of the Fitzgeralds and Longfields, of Bishops Woodward, Warburton, and Bennet. The cemetery around it is spacious, and shaded by numerous trees more than a hundred years old. The episcopal palace was described in a letter from Bishop Bennet to Dr. Parr, as a large irregular building, having been altered and im proved by different bishops ; but altogether a comfortable
z 2
340 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and handsome residence. “The side next to the village has a very close screen of trees and shrubs, and three other sides look to a large garden and a farm of 400 acres. This farm constitutes what is called the mcnsal lands, which Were intended for the corn and cattle consumed at the bishop’s table. The garden is large — four acres, consisting of four quarters full of fruit, particularly strawberries and raspber ries, which Bishop Berkeley had a predilection for; and separated as well as surrounded by shrubberries, which con tain some pretty winding walks, and one large one of nearly a quarter of a mile long, adorned for a great part with a hedge of myrtles, six feet high, planted by Berkeley’s own hand, and which had each of them a large ball of tar put to their roots. At the end of the garden is what we call the rock shrubbery, a walk leading under young trees, among sequestered crags of limestone, which hang many feet above our heads, and ending at the mouth of a cave of unknown length and depth, branching to a great distance under the earth, and sanctified by a thousand wild traditions.”
Bishop Berkeley was appointed to this see in 1738. He had officiated for some years as Chaplain to the British Embassy at the Court of the King of Sicily ; and returning to Ireland as Chaplain to the Duke of Grafton, Lord Lieu tenant, he was appointed successively Dean of Dromore and Deny, before his promotion to this see, where he became so illustrious by his writings, and merited the line from Pope, which is inscribed upon his monument at Oxford, where he died in 1773 —
“ To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.”
After Berkeley James Stopford occupied the see till 1759, when he died, leaving behind him one published sermon. Robert Johnson succeeded, and after him came Dr. Hervey, fourth son of the Earl of Bristol, who was translated to the see of Deny in the following year. Charles Agar, the grandson of a bishop, obtained the see of Cloyne in 1768, which he held for eleven years, and was then translated to the archbishopric of Cashel. Richard Woodward, an Englishman, distinguished as a scholar and an author, came
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 341
next. He published a pamphlet on “ The Present State of the Church in Ireland/’ 1787, which passed rapidly through several editions, exciting the admiration of Churchmen, but provoking violent enmity among Roman Catholics and Dis senters. His name deserves to be mentioned with honour, as one of the first advocates of the right of the poor of Ireland to a national provision, in support of which he published two pamphlets. It was he that planned and principally founded the House of Industry in Dublin, in 1773. In the House of Lords he pleaded powerfully for the repeal of the penal statutes against Roman Catholics. He was, in fact, a bishop of very rare public spirit in those times — the Whately of his day — and he well deserved the eulogium engraved upon his monument in his own cathedral, where he was buried — “ The father of the poor, the friend of toleration, and the support and ornament of the Protestant established religion.”
The next Bishop of Cloyne was Dr. William Bennet, who presided over the see for twenty-six years. Of him nothing is recorded by Archdeacon Cotton, except his effort to obtain the Provostship of Trinity College, to be held in commen- dain with his see, which was frustrated by the indignant remonstrance of Edmund Burke. Bishop Bennet was through life the friend and correspondent of the learned Dr. Samuel Parr. Dr. Warburton was translated to this see from Limerick in 1820. He is remembered best for the liberality with which he provided for his own family at the expense of the Church. Bishop Bririkely, the last occupant of this see, who died in 1835, was an Englishman, who had obtained the highest honors in science at Cambridge, and had been Professor of Astronomy in Trinity College, Dublin. Celebrated as an astronomer, and a botanist, he was for many years President of the Royal Irish Academy, and contributed several papers, which are preserved in its “ Transactions.”
On the whole, there are fewer anomalies in the diocese of Cork than in most others in the south and west, and the clergy seem generally anxious to discharge their duties to
342
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the best of their abilities according to their opportunities. Still there are glaring inequalities and a striking dispro portion between income and work, as the following table will show : —
CORK AND Ross.
Name of Benefice or
Living.
Net Value.
No. ofMoni- bc-rs of Es tablished
Total Population.
Cost per head of Church
Proportion of Church Mem bers to entire
Church.
Population.
Population.
£
£ s. d.
Dunderrow,
294
66
1,336
Inchigeelagh,
297
55
4,020
Kilbrittain,
287
38
737
Killaspugmullane, .
380
_
1,691
Knockavilly,
438
64
1,155
Moviddy,
396
30
1,416
Temple Michael de
Duagh,
17G
21
404
Temple Trine,
308
62
812
Temple Omalus,
157
17
791
Total in 9 benefices,
2,739
353
12,362
7 15 0
3 per cent.
This gives an average amount per head for the Church population of £7 los.
The diocese of Cloyne contains ninety-one beneficed clergymen, enjoying a net income of £24,385, giving an average of £208 to each incumbent. The Established Church population amounts to a total of 11,740, so that every soul in the diocese costs the State £2 Is. Or/, for its spiritual care. I have constructed a table from Stacpoole’s returns showing the relative numbers of Church people, and the amount of money paid to their clergy in thirty-five benefices of this diocese, from which it will appear that thirty-five incumbents receive the net sum of £12,228 for minis tering to 1,209 souls, while there is outside the pale of the Establishment in the same parishes a total population of Roman Catholics of 09,099, comparatively poor, whose clergy receive nothing from the State, although the tithe- rentcharge is levied off the lands they cultivate : —
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. DIOCESE OF CLOYNE.
£43
Name of Benefice or Living.
Net Value.
No. of Mem bers of Established
Total Population.
Cost per head of Church
Proportion of Church’ Mem bers to entire
Church.
Population.
Population.
£
£ s. d.
Aghern, .
310
54
1,228
Aghabulloge, .
312
52
2,823
Aghinagh,
360
43
1,627
Aglishdrinah, .
179
544
Ardao’h,
337
21
1,227
Ballyhea,
341
18
4,113
Bally hooley, .
326
43
1,834
Ballyvonrney, .
350
32
3,002
Castlemartyr, .
446
_
2,652
Clonmult,
174
9
621
Clonpriest,
415
14
2,005
Coole,
101
3
164
Donoughmore,
C62
84
3,999
Dungourney, .
406
44
1,225
Garrycloyne, .
866
38
3,427
Glanworth,
369
50
2,465
Gortroe, .
282
22
1,379
Inchinabackey,
179
18
590
Inniscarra,
580
170
4,948
Kilbrin, .
417
33
3.539
Kilcreddan,
291
23
3,495
Kilwortli,
516
144
5,000
Killoagh,
412
57
,648
Kilnemartery, .
229
16
,726
Kilteskin,
213
_
279
Knockmourne,
312
55
,629
]\rogeesha,
510
24
,413
Monanimmy, . Nathlash,
268 207
18 1
,497
,577
Pliarahy,
275
15
,023
Shandrum,
563
23
2,996
Subulter,
47
1
131
Templenacarrigy, .
281
17
749
WallstoAvn,
253
27
463
Whitechurch, .
439
40
2,061
Total in 35 benefices,
12,228
1,209
69,099
10 2 0
2 per cent.
This table gives, in round numbers, £10 a year on an average for every Anglican soul in these thirty-five parishes.
In the Roman Catholic arrangements, the diocese of Cork includes the county of Cork and part of Kerry. The Bishop is the Most Reverend William Delany, D.D.., who, in 1847, succeeded JBishop Murphy, a prelate held in the highest
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
esteem by all parties for his learning and virtues, being a member of one of the most respectable and wealthy families in Cork. The number of parish priests in the diocese is 32; administrators, curates, and chaplains, 58 ; the number of churches is 70; convents, 7; nunneries, 10; monasteries, 2; Christian Brothers’ schools, 3 ; Presentation Monks’ schools, 3 ; Presentation Nuns’ schools, 3 ; Sisters of Mercy schools, 1 ; Sisters of Charity schools, 1. The ladies of the Ursuline Convent, Blackrock, conduct one of the first boarding schools for young ladies in Ireland, and there are also highly respect able day schools in the city. The Christian Brothers’ schools are attended by 2,150 pupils daily, representing about 6,000 children on the rolls. There are upwards of 8,000 pupils under the Christian Brothers and the Presentation Monks, while the nuns instruct 7,220. Besides these there is in the city and throughout the diocese a fair supply of lay schools directed by the parochial clergy. I subjoin a synopsis of the united dioceses: —
89
§
Propor
Diocese.
trt
W *?
Net Income.
Ave rage for each Incum bent.
Cost per Head of Church Population.
Total Popula tion.
Estab lished Church Popula tion.
tion of Church Members to entire Popula
I
tion.
£
£
£ s. d.
Percent.
Cork, . . .
76
18,656
245
0 14 0
239,213
26,736
11
Cloyne, . .
91
24,386
268
216
215,166
11,746
5^
Ross, . . .
29
5,759
198
143
69,903
4,746
3*
Total for united
diocese, . „
196
48,801
249
126
524,282
43,228
8i
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. $45
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE see of Limerick, according to Sir James Ware, was founded by King Donald O’Brien about the time of the English invasion; but tradition traces its origin to St. Munchin, the son of Secliia, who was placed by St. Patrick over some Christian converts in that place, and affirms that the parish church, which now bears the saint’s name, was originally the cathedral. We may, however, pass over his supposed successors, about whom little or nothing is known, and also over a number of prelates of the Anglo-Norman period, till we come down towards the close of the fifteenth century. In 1489, John Folan, a canon of Ferns, who was then at Rome, as proxy of the Archbishop of Armagh, was appointed to this see by the Pope. Three or four years later, John Quin, or Coyne, a Dominican friar, obtained this bishopric, although Henry VIII. endeavoured to place another person in the office. Bishop Quin was brother to the direct ancestor of the present Earl of Dunraven. The next bishop, who succeeded in 1551, was William Casey, who was pro moted by King Edward VI. He was deprived by Queen Mary five years after, but restored by Elizabeth in 1571. Bishop Casey left an only daughter, married to Sir D. Wray, of Leicestershire ; and from her have descended the Earl of Buckinghamshire, the Earl of Limerick, Earl Ranfurley, Sir Aubrey de Vere, and Mr. William Monsell, of Tervoe.* Hugh Lacy was made bishop in the room of Casey, but he had conscience enough to resign when Queen Elizabeth enforced the English Liturgy.
John Thornburgh, an Englishman, succeeded Bishop
Casey. His chief qualifications were that he was “a lover of
natural and experimental philosophy, an encourager of mining
and minerals, and having great skill in chemistry,” But he
* Cotton, vol. v,, p. 59,
346 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
had a much stronger recommendation, in the fact that he had performed many useful services to the Crown. Bernard Adams, another Englishman, appointed in 1603, held the bishopric of Kilfenora in commendarii, with two or three other benefices. Limerick seems to have been a favourite see with the English divines. Francis Goucfli, the third in
O O •>
succesion from the prolific sister Church across the channel, was appointed in 1020 ; George Webb, a fourth Englishman, in 1034 ; and Robert Sibthorpe, a fifth, in 1642. Edward Synge came next, and was afterwards translated to Cork, being succeeded by William Fuller, a native of London, in whose time Ardfert and Aghadoe were united to Limerick by patent, dated March 10, 1606. Dr. Francis Marsh, a native of Gloucestershire, came next, and was succeeded by Vesey, ancestor of Viscount de Vesci and Ve’-jey Fitzgerald. Simon Digby, son of the Bishop of Dromore, Nathaniel Wilson, an Englishman, and Thomas Smyth, bringdown the succession to the end of the seventeenth century. Bishop Smyth was the grandfather of the first Viscount Gort. He survived during a quarter of the eighteenth century, when another Englishman appeared in the person of William Burscough, chaplain to Lord Carteret, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. James Leslie, John Averill, and William Gore, who followed in succession, were Irishmen; so also was William Cecil Pery, afterwards created Lord Glentworth. Thomas Barnard was promoted to this see in 1794, and was followed by Dr. Warburton in 1806. This bishop was trans lated to Cloy lie in 1820, and was succeeded by Thomas Elriiigton, Provost of Trinity College, of whom I have already spoken as Bishop of Ferns. He was succeeded two years after by John Jebb, one of the very few Irish prelates who gave themselves to the cultivation of literature. His life, with a selection from his letters, was published by his chap lain, Mr. Forster, in 1836. Jebb was a native of Drogheda, the son of a merchant, who was descended from the Jebbs, of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire. He was the author of works on sacred literature, practical theology, “The Protestant Kempis, or piety without asceticism;” and, in addition to the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 347
Life and Letters already mentioned, his “ Thirty years’ corre spondence with Mr. Alexander Knox,” was published in two volumes in 1834. For some years previous to his death, Bishop Jebb was laid aside by a severe paralytic stroke. He died in England, near Waiidsworth, in 1833, at the early age of fifty-nine.
The Hon. Edmund Knox, youngest son of Lord Northland, was translated from Killaloe to Limerick in 1834. He continued to hold the office till 1849, though he had been for years residing 011 the Continent. He was succeeded by William Higgiri, who was translated to Deny in 1853, arid still continues at the same post. The next bishop of Lime rick was Dr. Henry Griffin, an ex-Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, who died in 18GG. He was succeeded by Dr. Graves, Dean of the Chapel Royal. The Dean was devoted to antiquarian pursuits, and was for many years President of the Royal Irish Academy, to which he contributed some learned papers. Being a man of an active turn of mind and liberal sympathies, he distinguished himself by an attempt to promote middle class education, as a leading member of the Endowed Schools Commission, whose inquiries were protracted for about three years. The result was a monster blue book of four enormous volumes ; but the mountain which was so long in labour did not produce even a mouse.
The united dioceses of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe include the whole of the county of Kerry, nearly the whole of the county of Limerick, and some portions of the counties of Clare and Cork, the area being 1,770,017 statute acres. The gross value of the see is £4,G12 — net £3,9G1. It con tains 12G benefices, including eight perpetual and district cures. The number of curates is about 50. The bishop appoints to 48 livings, the Crown to 20, incumbents to 17, and lay patrons to 40. The net income distributed between the incumbents is £12,228. Limerick has its full share of dignitaries — a dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, and archdeacon, and half a score of prebendaries ; while Ardfert and Aghadoe each rejoices in an archdeacon of its own. In 1831 the population of the diocese of Limerick was 228,777,
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
having 38 churches, with 8,330 sittings. In 1834 the popu lation consisted of 11,122 Church people, 85 Presbyterians, and 191 other Protestant Dissenters — that is, less than 12,000 Protestants of all denominations ; while the Roman Catholic population of the same diocese amounted to 246,302, or about twenty to one. The whole united dioceses had then a total population of 562,387 ; at the last census it was only 394,562 ; so that the famine and emigration must have reduced it to the extent of 167,826.
Limerick, “ The City of the violated Treaty,” is too well known to need any description here ; but a few words may be said of the other two constituent parts of the united diocese. Ardfert, a small village four miles from Trnlec, the present capital of Kerry, gives its name to a parish which stretches along the wild coast of the Atlantic. Near the village stands Ardfert Abbey, the seat of the family of Crosbie, formerly Earls of Glandore, and within the demesne is the ruin of the abbey from which it receives its name, and in which, about twenty-five years ago, I saw an immense number of human skulls, piled up like cannon balls. The village then contained a population of 600 or 700 persons, inhabiting about 100 houses, nearly all mud cabins. Before the Union Ardfert was a borough, and returned two members to Parliament, or rather its owner did so, and received £15,000 for his interest at the time of the Union. Ardfert was a very ancient diocese, but since 1(560 it has been united to the see of Limerick, together with Aghadoe. Of this once famous episcopal town, beautifully situated within a mile and a half of Killarney, and commanding the most charming views, nothing remains but some small ruins, popularly called, “ The Bishop’s Chair,” and the stump of a round tower, which exhibits a style of masonry quite superior to that of the fragments of the cathedral. In the Koman Catholic arrangements these two old sees form parts of the diocese of Kerry.
Amongst the lay patrons of these united dioceses are the following peers : — The Earl of Devon, the Earl of Cork, who appoints to seven livings; Lord Leconfield,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 349
Lord Muskerry, the Earl of Limerick, Lord Headley, Lord Ventry, the Earl of Dunraven, the Earl of Kenmare, and Lord Southwell. The last three are Koman Catholics, and in their case the appointments lapse to the Crown, or they are made for them by the Crown. In the “ Clerical Directory “ there is a curious distinction made with reference to Lord Dunraven, who is a convert to the Church of Rome. But it seems to be assumed that his aberration will be only temporary, for the phrase is, “ The Crown, during the nonconformity of the Earl of Dunraven.” There is one patriarchial incumbent in the diocese of Limerick — the Rev. Richard Dickson, who has enjoyed a Crown living, with a net income of £558, for the long period of 68 years, having been inducted in 1799. This rector has church accommodation for 150 persons ; but it is more than enough, for the total number of Church members of all ages in his parish is only 08. The sum of £558 is very large to have received as an income for this small amount of work. I find that in the diocese of Limerick thirteen of the incumbents are non-resident, eight because there are no glebe-houses, two because their livings are sequestrated, and one because lie resides on another benefice in the county of Kildare. In nine of the benefices there are no churches, and of course no Divine service. In Ardfert and Ao’hadoe there are six
o
incumbents non-resident; four because there are no glebes, and two because residence is not required. In the diocese of Limerick there are only seven benefices, with a Church population exceeding 200 souls, and the same number in Ard fert and Aghadoe. These include the towns and the city of Limerick, and they are nearly all unions. Several of the unions have three parishes each ; and Listowel has as many as ten parishes. The following thirty-four benefices in the united dioceses have each a Church population under fifty persons : — Liscorinack, Kilinellick, Ballinloudry, Ernly, Cairelly, Aney (a union of seven parishes), Rochestown (one Churchman,) Clonkeen (two Churchmen), Bally cahane, Bruree, Castlerobert (five Protestants in two parishes,) Croagh, Dysart (five Protestants), Drehidtarsna, Dromin, Effin (eight
350
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Protestants), Killacathan, Kilkeedy, Kilpeacon, Mahonagh, Manisternenagh, Mungret, Shanagolden, Derrygalvin (one Protestant), Aglish, Cloughane, Dromod, Duagh, Garfinagh, Killemlogh, Kilcoiily, Killury, Molahiff (a union of three parishes), Obrenen.
These figures are all taken with the greatest care from returns furnished by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the registrars of the respective dioceses, in compliance with the order of the House of Commons (Captain Stacpoole’s). From these returns I have constructed the following table for these three dioceses, which w^ill show at a glance the number of benefices in each, the total net income of the clergy, the average income of each incumbent, the cost per head of the Church people committed to his charge, the total Church population, the number of the Established Church population, and its proportion to the total population. From this table it will be seen that in the diocese of Limerick the Church Protestants are one to twenty, and in Ardfert and Aghadoe not quite one to thirty-three.
Limerick.
Ardfort and Aghadoe.
Total.
Number of benefices,
61
49
110
Net income, ....
£12,228
£9,488
£21,716
Average for each incumbent, .
£200
£193
£197
Cost per head of Church po
pulation, ....
£1 8.9. 0(1.
£1 9,5. (\d.
£1 Ss. Sd.
Total population, .
172.672
221,939
394,561
Established Church population,
8,679
6,424
15,103
Proportion of Church members
to entire population, .
5 per cent.
3 per cent.
4 per cent.
The united dioceses of Killaloe, Kilfenora, Clonfert, and Kilmacduagh have their head-quarters at Clarisford House, Killaloe, a fine mansion, beautifully situated in the midst of ample, rich, and well planted grounds, on the banks of the Shannon, near Lough Derg. The town is little more than a large village, though it was once a place of some note,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPEICS. 351
as having been the seat of the O’Briens, and an important military pass. Kincora, the residence of the celebrated Brian Boru, was in the neighbourhood ; but nothing remains of it save a large, circular earthen fort, called Bal-Boru. Kilfenora, which must have been once a “city,” is now a very poor village in the county of- Clare, standing on the road from Emiistyinon to Burr en. Clonfert is a similar village, situated three miles from Eyrecourt, county Galway, on the verge of a bog. It consists of a few scattered houses, the remains of a “palace” and a ‘‘cathedral.” The palace is a plain-looking country mansion, and the cathedral a small, dingy, common- looking old church. Kilmacduagh is about three miles from Gort, in the same county, where there are the ruins of a round tower and seven churches, most of which are barely discernible, and at the best they must have been very hut- like buildings, with the exception of the cathedral.
In 1G01, Roland Lynch, Bishop of Kilmacduagh, obtained a grant of Clonfert in commendam, arid they have been united ever since. In another place Archdeacon Cotton states, that Lynch was made Bishop of Clonfert, with a licence to hold Kilmacduagh in. commendam. But it amounts to the same thing. In 1834 they were both handed over to the Bishop of Killaloe by what the Archdeacon calls “ the ill-omened Church Temporalities Act.” In reference to an other exchange of a similar kind, he exclaims, “This bishopric became united to Tiiam by Act of Parliament.” He seems greatly shocked that anything touching the Church should have been done by Act of Parliament, although Parliament had been doing such things to oblige aristocratic Churchmen from the Reformation down. Did it never occur to him to ask what would the Irish Church Establishment have been without Acts of Parliament ? The Church of Rome in Ire land is what she is, not only without Acts of Parliament, but in spite of a hundred hostile Statutes. If the Church of England in Ireland had been left equally unprotected by the legislature, or had been equally discouraged by the State, what would be its condition now ? Would it be more in fluential than the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and on
352 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
what ground, apart from conquest and State policy, was it entitled to better treatment ?
The bishopric of Killaloe is said to have been founded in the seventh century. Archdeacon Cotton being a good Churchman, is anxious enough to make out all the links of succession, connecting the present Anglican bishops with St. Patrick ; but the venerable and conscientious chronicler is often obliged to qualify the records, as in the following sentences : — “A.D. 039 (circa}. The first bishop was St. Flanan, a disciple or pupil of the school of St. Lua; he was the son of Theodrick, or Turlogh, King of Thomond, who was a munificent benefactor to this church, and was interred there with honour by his son. Flanan is supposed to have been consecrated at Rome about the year 0*39 ; but at what precise period, or how long he governed his see remains in great obscurity. The successors of Flanan for some centuries are not now known. The earliest among them whose name Ware could discover is Carinacan O’Muilcashel, who died 1019.”* We may therefore dismiss the fiction of an apos tolic succession, and pass on to the beginning of the thirteenth century, when M’Geoghegan tells us, that Geofry Marsh founded a castle at Killaloe, and compelled the inhabitants to receive the English bishop. The names of the bishops, however, are decidedly Irish, nearly all Mac’s arid O’s till we get into the seventeenth century. In 1G13, John Rider, a native of Cheshire, became bishop of this diocese, of which he presented a statistical account to the Royal Commissioners in 1022. About ten years after he was succeeded by Lewis Jones, a Welshman, who lived till he was 80. Edward Parry, a native of Newry, came next. Then another Irish man, Edward Worth, who was followed in succession by Daniel Witter, an Englishman ; John Roane, a Welshman, and Henry Ryder, born in Paris, but educated in England. His successor, Thomas Lyndesay, or Lindsay, was also an Englishman ; his successor was Sir Thomas Vesey, son of the Archbishop of Tuam. Drs. Forster, Carr, Storey, Ryder, and Brown occupied the see from that date down to 1745, * “ Fasti,” vol. i,, p. 458.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 353
when Richard Chenevix, who had been chaplain to the Prince of Orange, and subsequently to Lord Chesterfield, when Viceroy of Ireland, was appointed to this see ; but in the following year he was translated to Waterford. This prelate was an excellent man, who left £1,000 to Waterford and £1,000 to Lisrnore ; the interest of the former sum to be given to clergymen’s widows, and the latter to be dis pensed for the benefit of Lismore, according to the discretion of the bishop. His only daughter and heiress, Melesina, married Richard Trench, barrister, brother of the first Lord Ashtowii, and from her by the mother’s side is descended the present Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Chenevix Trench.
Bishop Chenevix was succeeded by Dr. Synge, son of the Archbishop of Tuam, and brother of the bishop of Elphin, so that there were three of this lucky family bishops at the same time ; and for the benefit of one of them, in 1753, the bishopric of Kilfenora was united to Killaloe. The second occupant of the united diocese was Robert Fowler, an Englishman, who succeeded in 1771 ; after him came Dr. Chinr.cry, who died in a year, and was succeeded by Dr. Barnard, son of the Bishop of Deny, who was translated to Limerick in 1794, making way for the Hon. William Knox, fourth son of Lord Northland, who was translated to Deny in 1803, making way in his turn for Dr. Lyndesay, sixth son of the Earl of Balcarres. This gentleman was quickly translated to Kiklare, which he held, with the deanery of Christ Church. He was followed in Killaloe by a member of another noble family, Dr. Alexander, nephew of the Earl of Caledori ; and being so connected, we are not surprised to read that he was in the same year translated to Down and Connor, and subsequently to Meath. Another of the same noble class followed him in Killaloe, Lord Robert Ponsonby Tottenham Loftus, second son of the Marquis of Ely. We now light upon a name, Richard Mant, an Eng lishman, of whom Archdeacon Cotton can say, and he does so with an evident feeling of relief and gladness, that “ he owed his promotion to his talents.1’’ He thought it unneces-
2 A
354 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
sary, no doubt, to inform his readers to what the long list of the younger sons of peers owed their promotion.
Another man without title, Dr. Arbuthnot, intervened in 1 823, and was succeeded by the third son of Baron Ponsonby, translated to Deny in 1831, making way for the seventh son of Viscount Northland, whose family is one of the most episcopal in Ireland.
The sees of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh having been united to Killaloe, Dr. Butsori became bishop of the four sees on the translation of Dr. Knox to Limerick. Next came Dr. Sandes, who was in 1839 translated to Cashel, making way for the Hon. Ludlow Toiison, eighth son of the first Baron Riversdale. Bishop Tonsoii died in 1802, and was succeeded by the present bishop, Dr. Fitzgerald, who was translated from Cork.
Bishop Fitzgerald is the son of Maurice Fitzgerald, M.D., and brother of Baron Fitzgerald. He was born in ] 814, and took his degree in Trinity College, Dublin, in 1837. He was successively Rector of Monkstown, near Dublin, Arch deacon of Kildare, and Professor of Moral Philosophy and of Ecclesiastical History in the Dublin University. For many years he was the Private Chaplain of Archbishop Whately, by whom he was held in the highest estimation, and to whose influence is ascribed his promotion to the see of Cork. In that position he won the esteem of all parties, no fault being found with any part of his administration of the diocese excepting the rigidity of his Churchism. He pro hibited his clergy from taking part in united prayer-meetings with Presbyterians, Methodists, and Independents. It is supposed that he was influenced in his non-Protestant ex- clusiveness by his private chaplain, the Rev. George Webster, who, though the son of a good AVesleyan, and though he had himself been once a tutor in the Connexional School in that body in Dublin, is one of the stiffest and most uncompro mising of the ritualistic clergy in Ireland. It is believed that it is to Mr. Webster’s histrionic mimicry of Romanism that the present Bishop of Cork referred more particularly in the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 355
graphic description which he gave of Anglican mummery in his late Charge. Very different from the sentiments of his predecessor are those which he delivered on the 15th of January, 1867, to the Church of England Young Men’s Society in Belfast. There he declared that the Church did not belong to the clergy but to the laity, and that by the Church he did not mean Episcopalians merely, but Protest ants of all denominations who derive their faith from the Bible. Mr. Webster, however, is so highly prized by Dr. Fitzgerald, that though the former is the incumbent of a large church in Cork, and the latter resides far away on the banks of the Shannon, the reverend gentleman is still the Bishop’s domestic chaplain.
Bishop Fitzgerald leads a very retired life, devoted to his studies. He lately published a Charge headed “ The Case of the Church Establishment in Ireland Considered.” Referring to the fact that the Church of the invading minority was established as the Church of the whole nation, Bishop Fitzgerald says : —
“ There were, indeed, other possible courses before our forefathers : to leave Ireland without any Church Estab lishment, to establish the Roman Catholic Church, or to establish a Church regulated on the principles of the Church of England, concurrently with the endowment of other com munions. But the project of leaving a country without any Church Establishment, would have been then regarded as equally wild and impious by every considerable party in the State ; and the project of a Roman Catholic Establish ment, either sole, or in connexion with others, could not have been executed without convulsing the Empire with a civil war. It is not difficult to see, then, that, as I said, the policy actually adopted was the inevitable result of the cir cumstances of the case. On the whole, I am satisfied, that even viewing the measure merely as a question of statesman ship, it Avas the wisest policy ; and that so far as it has failed, that failure is not due to the project in itself, but to the weakness of the mode of its execution, and to concurring circumstances in no way essentially connected with it.
2 A2
356 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
“There can be, I think, no reasonable doubt, that if, at the period of the Reformation, the power of the English Government had been the same in this country as it was in England itself, and if the same wise and moderate measures had been adopted here as were adopted there, the mass of the Irish population could have been brought into con formity with the new system, even more easily than the English.”
But the opposite system having been adopted, producing the results which we now deplore, his lordship says : —
“ For these the Church of this country cannot, I think, be fairly held responsible. They were the work of politicians, not of Churchmen. They were made, indeed, to secure what was called the Protestant interest ; but that interest was not the interest of the Church. On the contrary, it is notorious, that many of those who most zealously prosecuted this unrelenting course of oppression towards the Roman Catholics, were persons who lost no opportunity of plun dering the property, and insulting the persons and the profession of the ministers of their own nominal creed.
“ The burthen and disgrace of the penal code has, indeed, at last been removed from among us, though it is only within our own memories that our Roman Catholic fellow subjects have been admitted to the full participation of equal civil rights with ourselves. In the interval which has since elapsed, no one will deny that our Church has visibly improved in activity and efficiency ; but if it were expected that, in this short interval, we should have accomplished the miraculous work of overcoming the prejudices which had become fixed by the neglect, or exasperated by the oppression of centuries, we must fully confess that we have failed to fulfil such expectations. How far they are to be treated as reasonable expectations, we must leave others to judge. We cannot undertake to perform such prodigies as these.
-£ -X- •!(• & * >Y
“ Then, as to the dangerous body whose minds are poisoned with a rancour against what they call British ascendancy, drawn from the long-remembered wrongs of former ages of .
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 357
misrule, it is plain that the Protestant Church Establish ment is a very small part of their quarrel with the present state of things. They know that whenever the present settlement of power and property — whenever the great frame of Imperial policy goes down in Ireland, the Church must go down with it. Meanwhile, it is only as a part of that frame that they regard it with hostility ; and, perhaps, there is no part which they regard with less. Of all holders of property in Ireland, since we got rid of the odious old tithe-system, the ecclesiastical holders of property give least annoyance to the bulk of the people. They are commonly known as, whatever else they may be, intelligent and respectable resident gentlemen, who oppress and injure nobody, kind and sympathizing neighbours, and, according to their means, liberal employers and rewarders of local industry. No doubt, as holders of property under what is regarded as an English settlement, as identified by interest and education with English law and English sentiment, we come in for our share of hatred against everything English.” After all these candid admissions, this able and liberal prelate has no remedy to propose, and he sees nothing for it but to maintain at all hazards the present system of Church and State in Ireland. Indeed it is hard to expect anything else from even the most enlightened and honest men in his position. His lordship has a net income of £ 3,261 ; he lives in a palace fit for a duke ; he is the patron of eighty-eight livings ; he is the spiritual ruler of more than 1 00 clergymen, who receive a total net income of more than 20,000 a year, for ministering to, or pretending to minister to, about 10,000 souls, scattered over several counties, through a population of 355,000. Four dioceses are united under his charge. In Killaloe his flock number one in twenty of the population ; in Clonfert, one in twenty- five ; in Kilfenora and Kilmacduagh, one in 100. It will be seen by the following table that in one of these dioceses the spiritual care of the Church people, including children, costs £5 12s. a head, and in another, £3 13s.
358
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES. TABLE.
tn
Propor
Dioceso.
. of benefict
Net Income.
Ave rage for each Incum bent.
Cost per Hoacl of Church Population.
Total Popula tion.
Estab lished Church Popula tion.
tion of Church Members to entire Popula
*
tion.
Killaloc, . .
07
£ 14,055
£ 209
£ S. (I 120
225,090
12,700
Pe” cent.
Kilfenora, . .
-
1,410
202
5 12 0
23,042
251
1
Clonfert, . .
13
3,080
237
1 4 0
01,143
2,521
4
Kilmacduagh, .
4
1,603
400
a 13 o
42,798
434
1
Total for united
diocese, . .
91
20,154
221
154
355,079
15,900
—
Of the sixty-eight benefices in the diocese of Killaloc there are only fifteen, having each a Church population exceeding 200 souls. Birr or Parsonstown is the most Protestant place in the diocese, having 2,000 members of the Established Church and 320 Dissenters. But this district may be con sidered a sort of English colony, existing under the protection of the once powerful family of the Parsons, now represented by Lord Rosse, the great astronomer, who has recently given his opinion on sublunary affairs in a small pamphlet on the relations between landlord and tenant, in which he lias proved to his own satisfaction that all the blame about what is wrong rests with the tenants, and none at all with the landlords. This, no doubt, is comparatively true, so far as his lordship is concerned, and the appearance of Parsonstown certainly does credit to its proprietor. Of the benefices in this diocese fully one-half arc unions of two or more parishes, and at least the same proportion of them do not contain fifty Church members each, young and old, while there are forty-four parities in the diocese without a single Pro testant !
Kilfenora contains thirteen parishes, but they were all lumped into three benefices — Kilfenora, Kilmaiiagheen, and Kathbourney. The income of the first is £543, the incum bent being non-resident on account of ill-health ; of the second, £595 10s. ; of the third, £247 10,9. The first has
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 359
forty-one souls, the second 104, and the third eighty-six, the total Church population in this diocese being 141.
Clonfert, the third diocese, has thirteen livings, in which there are three with a Church population of over 200 each. Most of the livings are unions, some with three parishes, some with four, and one with not less than seven. Kilmacduagh, the fourth diocese, has twenty-three parishes, the whole thrown into four livings. Most of these are vicarages, showing that laymen in the old times had made very free with the property of the Church in these smaller dioceses. Turning to the “ Irish Church Directory,” I find that in the diocese of Killaloe, &c., the bishop is the patron of eighty-eight livings ; the Dean and Chapter, and some clergymen, of seven or eight others ; Lord Leconfield, of four ; and the Crown, of only two. In Kilfcnora also the bishop appoints to four out of six of the livings. But in the two dioceses of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh that were transferred from Tuam by the Church Temporalities Act, the bishop’s patronage is more limited. Five of the large unions in these dioceses belong to the Marquis of Clanricarde, and to three others his lordship appoints witli the bishops alternately.
The Bishop of Killaloe is surrounded by an ample array of dignitaries — four deans, four archdeacons, with the usual number of chancellors, precentors, treasurers, prebendaries, <fcc. The principal cathedral, however, in which they are expected to display their pomp is a small, dingy, old church, with accommodation for 200 persons, the attendance being, probably, not half that number, as the Church population of the benefice is only 221 souls, the total population being 2,800. When I was there, on a fine Sunday evening last summer, the attendance was not more than twenty or thirty.
Now let any candid, disinterested man, with the least glimmering of statesmanship, or the most elementary ideas of the principles of just government and sound policy, reflect over the foregoing facts and figures, and say whether such an ecclesiastical system as this ought to be maintained in its integrity. For bishops and the sons of bishops, for such of the nobility and landed gentry — and they are numerous
360 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
— as have rich episcopal blood flowing in their veins, we can make allowance just as we did for the Christian slave owners in Jamaica and in the Southern States of America, because it is scarcely in human nature to be able to see clearly and judge fairly from their point of view and with the strong instincts of their order. But for enlightened statesmen, looking from an imperial point of view at the Irish Establishment, and saying that it is an institution that works very well as it is, that it involves no national injustice, no waste of trust property, no unrighteous inequality, and that it ought to be defended intact by all the power of England, — for such statesmen there is no excuse. They do not deserve the name.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy have shown no disposition to diminish the number of dioceses, or to throw in small ones to be held in commendam, in order to increase the income of the bishop. On the contrary, they have seemed anxious to keep up the episcopal bench in its full strength as to numbers, leaving each bishop to take care of himself so far as revenue is concerned. The diocese of Limerick includes the county of Limerick, and a small portion of Clare. The number of parish priests, and administrators, and curates is 58. Of parochial churches and chapels there are 94 ; houses and chapels of regular clergy, 5 ; 10 con vents, with 142 members ; and 5 monastic houses, with 38 members. Of the convents, three are in the country, at Newcastle, Adare, and Rathkeale, and three in the city, one of which is at the union workhouse, where a community of the sisterhood is established, the guardians having placed under their control and management the union hospital, containing nearly 1,000 patients. In the convent of the Good Shepherd there are 23 sisters, who have charge of a Magdalen Asylum, with over 70 penitents, and a reforma tory with 30 children. There are altogether 11,466 children in primary schools in this diocese in addition to the ordi nary parochial schools, under lay teachers scattered over the diocese. The “ Irish Catholic Directory “ records that the present bishop, Dr. Butler, “ has waged an active and most
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successful war against the model schools in the city until he emptied them of Catholic pupils.” So much the worse. I have visited the model schools in Cork, Sligo, and Deny, and I have never seen institutions of the kind more ad mirably conducted. The education is of the highest order, the discipline perfect, and the children are clean, cheerful, and remarkably intelligent. I believe there is not the slightest ground for suspecting the least disposition among the teachers in any of those schools to abuse their oppor tunities for the purposes of proselytism, and I think it very greatly to be deplored that those excellent and much-needed institutions for imparting a superior middle class education should have encountered so much opposition on the part of the Roman Catholic bishops.
Killaloe, in the Roman Catholic system, includes portions of Clare, Tipperary, King’s County, Gal way, Limerick, and Queen’s County. The bishop is Dr. Flamiery, who was consecrated in 1858, and who has for his coadjutor Dr. Power, consecrated in 18G5. Bishop Power lias recently built a house for himself in the town of Killaloe, on an elevated site, the ground for which, I understand, has been granted in a very liberal spirit by Dr. Fitzgerald, the Protest ant bishop of the diocese. The total number of the secular clergy in this diocese, parish priests and curates, is 124, the number of churches 142. It is a remarkable fact that the regular clergy have but one chapel in this diocese. There are two monastic houses, with only ten members between them, and five convents, with 102 members in community. A diocesan college has been recently opened at Ennis, where there are forty boarders and 1 00 day pupils.
Attached to the convent of Roscrea is an efficient ladies’ school, while each of the four Convents of Mercy — Nenagh, Ennis, Birr, and Kilrush — has, besides a primary school for the poor, a branch for superior education.
The diocese of Kerry includes the county of Kerry, and part of Cork. The bishop is the Most Rev. Dr. Moriarty, who resides in his “ palace “ at Killarney, where a magni ficent cathedral has been erected quite close to the beautiful
362 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
grounds of the Earl of Kenmare — a Catholic peer who has retired from public life. His son, Viscount Castlerosse, is a zealous and munificent supporter of his own Church ; but for some cause or other, though in much favour with the Queen, who honoured him with a visit some time ago, he is said to have refused a site for a place of worship belonging to the Church of which Her Majesty is the temporal head. Nowhere in all Ireland does the Establishment appear in such humiliating contrast with the splendour of the Church of Rome, which has several very fine new buildings in addi tion to the cathedral. The miserable hole in which the Protestants worship is found with difficulty, and is quite in keeping with the decayed, neglected, tumble-down condition of the whole town of Killamey, in. which nobody seems to build, or repair, or do anything whatever fur the future. The residence of the landlord, whose ancestral trees overshadow the town, is an earthly paradise. Three of the finest hotels in the kingdom are in the neighbourhood ; immense sums of money are spent there every summer by visitors to the lakes. But nothing seems to do the people any good. The number of parish priests and curates in the diocese is about 100, the number of churches and chapels 94, of which only two belong to the regular clergy. Tralee is the principal town in the diocese; the Christian Brothers have schools there, and at Cahirciveeii and Dingle. The Presentation Monks have schools at Killarney, and there are eleven con vent schools of various orders, in which 5,000 girls are taught, making a total of more than 8,000 children in the schools of the religious orders of this diocese. According to the report of one of the National Board’s Inspectors, himself a Roman Catholic, the literary education in some of those schools is extremely defective.
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CHAPTER XIX.
THE united diocese of Tuam, Killala, and Achonry, is the largest in Ireland. Tuam includes the greater part of the county of Galway, and a small portion of the county of Roscommon. Killala includes about one-third of the county Mayo, and some portion of the county of Sligo, andAchonry parts of the counties of Sligo and Mayo, forming together :-m area of 2,686,685 statute acres, and embracing the greater part of the province of Coimaught. The length of the diocese of Tuam is 77 statute miles, and its breadth Go. In 1834 the population consisted of 9,6 19 Churchmen, 367 Pres byterians, 65 Protestant Dissenters, and 467,970 Roman Catholics — the Protestants of all denominations being to the Roman Catholics in the proportion of one in forty. The population at the last census was 9, Oil members of the Established Church, and 30:2,367 Roman Catholics, the Presbyterians and Dissenters being under 500.
The see of Tuam is said to have been founded about the beginning of the sixth century. Its prelates are sometimes called by the Irish annalists bishops, or archbishops, of Connaught. There was once a bishopric of Mayo, which was annexed to the see in the sixteenth century, and of Enachdune, which after a long series of disputes, says Arch deacon Cotton, was finally annexed to Tuam “ about the reign of Queen Elizabeth.” The reader cannot fail to observe the vagueness with respect to dates and facts in the records with which the venerable author of Fasti Ecclesise Hibernicse would confirm the faith of the Irish Protestant bishops in their regular succession from St. Patrick. The reign of Elizabeth was a long one, yet he can only say that it was about that reign that one line of Celtic bishops was tied to another line. The same sort of vagueness and uncertainty pervades the whole history of the ancient Irish Church,
864 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
For example, St. Jarlath, the patron saint of Tuam, “is said” to have founded a monastery and a school there “about” the beginning of the sixth century. Then we read that the list of St. Jaiiath’s successors, for some centuries, is sadly imper fect. The most that the annalist can tell about them is that they “ died,” of which there can be no doubt, if they ever lived. There was one, however, in the middle of the twelfth century, who was a person so eminent for wisdom and liberality, that one of the old annalists “proclaimed that when he died Ireland died with him.” He might have said, like Mettemich, “ After me the Deluge.” But if Ireland was submerged in the Atlantic that time, she very soon came to the surface again, to prove to the world the irrepressibility of the Celtic race. Two years after we find another prelate of Tuam receiving the pall from Cardinal Paparo. Most of those saintly prelates seem to have been buried in the Abbey of Cong. From the close of the thirteenth century there seems to have been a struggle for the appointment of bishops to this see between the Pope, the King of England, and the Connaught chiefs, the Pope generally prevailing. The chiefs who had most to do with these matters were the Bermhip’liams arid Burkes. At length came the Reformation,
o o
when Christopher Bodkin, who pliant! y conformed to the religious faith of the reigning monarch, was transferred by Henry VIII. to this see from Kilmacduagh, which he was allowed to hold in commendam. Queen Elizabeth was understood to have abhorred the Irish language. But we find her recommending Nehemiah Donnellan to this see, because he was “ very fit to communicate with the people in their native tongue, and a very mete instrument to retain arid instruct them in duty and religion ; and that he had also taken great pains in translating and putting to the press the Communion Book and New Testament in the Irish language, which her Majesty greatly approved of.” It was unfortunate for the Established Church that she did not make all her appointments in the same spirit of consideration for the welfare of the people. Bishop Daniel, or O’Donnell, of this diocese, in the beginning of the seventeenth century
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finished the Irish translation of the New Testament, which had been commenced by Bishop Walsh, of Ossory. Nothing of this kind was to have been expected from Archbishop Boyle, who was obliged to take refuge in Galway during the rebellion of 1041, or from Archbishop Maxwell, who died of grief on hearing of some disaster that befel the cause of Charles I., or from Archbishop Yesey, who, during the tyranny of Lord Tyrconnell, was forced to fly to England with his Avife and twelve children.
Archbishop Synge had better times in the eighteenth century, and reigned peacefully for twenty-five years under the Penal Code. His successor, Dr. Hort, got Ardagh in commcndam, and it was so held for about a hundred years. Passing over Jemett Browne, of whom nothing remarkable is .recorded, we come to a magnificent aristocratic series of spiritual lords of Tuam, the last of which has just been ap pointed by Lord Derby. The first was the Hon. J. D. Bourke, brother to the Earl of Mayo, whose title he inherited. He was translated to this see from Ferns and Leighlin in 1782, and ruled it till 1794?, when he died, and was interred in the family burying ground near Naas. His successor was the Hon. William Beresford, who was afterwards created Baron Decies, and was buried in 1811) at Clonegam, near Curragh- more, the seat of his family, in the county Waterford. It was now the turn of another great aristocratic house, the Trenches of Ballinasloe, the head of which is the Earl of Claricarty. The Hon. William Power Trench was translated to this see from Elphiii in 1819, and reigned till 18.39, in which year he was succeeded by the Hon. Thomas Plunket, son of Lord Plunket, the great Irish Chancellor. The crowning appointment of this series is the Hon. Dr. Bernard, brother to the Earl of Bandon, who, on the occasion of his en- thronization at Tuam, on the 17th of January, 1867, declared that sec to be “ the bright spot of the Irish Establishment.” Its history is really interesting since the appointment of Dr. Trench, who was the last of its archbishops, the apostolic succession being profanely cut off by the Church Temporalities Act in 1834.
366 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Dr. Trench was first Bishop of Waterford. In the year 1809, through the influence of the Duke of Richmond, then Viceroy, he was translated to the see of Elphin, in the pro vince of Tuam. Like nearly all the old Irish sees, it is said to have been founded by St. Patrick, who must have been decidedly an ubiquitous apostle. But of his successors little or nothing is known for many centuries, till the arrival of the English ; “a little before which,” says Ware, “the see of Elphiii was enriched with largo estates, on the translation of the see of Roscommon to it ; the sees of Ardcarn and Drumclive, with others of less note, were united and annexed to this. At last it came to “be looked on as one of the richest in all Ireland, and had subject to it about seventy-nine parish churches.” This, no doubt, was the reason, why the accomplished brother of the Earl of Clan carty was translated to Connaught from the important city of Waterford. He, however, set to work with laudable zeal, inspecting all the parishes and institutions of his new diocese. He became the patron and manager of the Hibernian Bible Society, a branch of which was established at Elphin; and at a meeting in the cathedral it was resolved — “ that a cordial invitation should be given to the gentlemen of the Roman Catholic Church residing within the limits of this branch to join and give their patronage and support to the good and pious work intended.” But he did not restrict his efforts to the spiritual welfare of the Roman Catholic gentry ; he devoted himself most earnestly to the relief of temporal distress during the famine and pestilence which visited Connaught in 1817-18. Elphin felt severely their effects, having a wretched popu lation, without a market, without business of any kind, and very remote from .turbary. The poor of the town and its precincts were supplied by the Bishop with fuel, blankets, clothing, and plenty of milk, and even the wandering beggars received from him supplies of soup, rice, &c. In this way he became very popular. He also had a fever hospital opened for the poor people afflicted with typhus. Bishop Trench held the commission of the peace, and was very active as a magistrate. In this capacity, he on one occasion
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used his authority to enforce the rights of a priest, who was shut out of his chapel by his own nock, because the man of their choice had not been appointed. They had even threat ened the life of Mr. Dolan, the newly appointed priest. Dr. Trench being consulted by another magistrate, at once- declared his willingness to unite with him and uphold the law by protecting Mr. Dolan in the discharge of his duties in the parish chapel at Strokestown. Accordingly, his lord ship appeared on an appointed day, with four or five other magistrates, at Strokestown, and his presence had the desired effect. On another occasion the Bishop called out a number of the Enniskilleii Dragoons, and rode at their head, to dis perse a body of Whiteboys and other rioters, who threatened to do some mischief in the neighbourhood. He also paid attention to the prisons; and from a letter of his, written in. 1313, it appears that they were sadly in need of reform. In. the gaol of the county of Roscommon he found a common hall, in which nineteen persons were to sit, cook their food, and take their meals in a space in which nineteen persons could not conveniently stand, the cells which should have been used by the prisoners being otherwise improperly occupied, and another common hall being used as a guard room by the soldiers. He found twelve female prisoners, “all co-mixed, confined in one room, in which they all slept, cooked their food, and took their meals — no cells or common hall allotted to them, as the law directed. He found seven debtors confined in one room, as if they were criminals. Prisoners of all classes were confined together, good and bad — convicts and those whom the law, as well as Christian charity, still held to be innocent. There was 110 place allotted for a chapel, or an infirmary, or a work-room. The Inspector of Prisons, who received an ample salary, had not seen that gaol for three years. These facts, which present a vivid picture of the manner in which the landed gentry neglected their duties in those days, were formally brought by his lordship before the Grand Jury and the Judges at the Assizes; and in doing so, he showed how useful to the country a bishop of the Established Church, or any bishop,
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might make himself if he were a practical reformer, and went about among the people, sympathizing Avith them in their wants and grievances. But lie was a rare exception, more especially in the combination of religious zeal with charity. Mr. Albert Best, a Dissenter, for many years agent of the London Hibernian Society, bore testimony that Bishop Trench contributed much to the increase of religion in that diocese in which Sligo is situated. “The judicious selection of faithful clergymen for every vacancy secured an efficient parochial ministry. The hitherto neglected Protestant population, thinly scattered over the rural districts, was carefully sought out, and its spiritual wants attended to ; the happy consequence of which was, that Scriptural in formation became more extensive in every grade of society, and religion, instead of being the subject of derision, was felt in many cases in all its sanctifying influence, and in all, generally speaking, became an object of respect. Many of the leading gentry participated in these spiritual blessings, and they cordially co-operated in every plan of religious improvement.”
Archbishop Beresford, of Tuam, died in October, 1819, when the Prince Regent took into his royal consideration “ the singular piety and integrity of the Right Rev. Power Le Poor Trench, D.D.,” and translated him to the archbishop ric. When his Grace removed to that town in the month of December, the crowds that went forth to meet and welcome him were immense, and his carriage passed between burning piles of turf to the palace. “ Such is the return/’ he ex claimed, “for all the kindness they have received from the poor Archbishop, than whom there could not have been a more kind-hearted man.” Writing to a friend a few days later, his Grace said, “ Vve were met by a large mob at the suburbs of the town, and the crowd was so great from thence all through the town, cheering, that the carriage could hardly move. This was not very complimentary to a man of whom they knew nothing, nor very respectful to the memory of my predecessor.”
It should be recollected that these people, who burned
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their turf so freely, and cheered so loudly, giving a triumphal entry to a Protestant archbishop, were Roman Catholics, who had to pay tithes to his clergy, and to support their own priests at the same time. To one of the clergy, who had a dispute with a parishioner about potato tithes, he wrote as follows : — “ I candidly confess, that had I been con sulted before you made your claim for potato tithe I should have given my opinion against your doing so. I do not think the question now is, whether any retreat is inglorious; this is not the spirit in which a Christian minister ought to consider anything. If this claim had been bond fide made in consequence of injustice upon the part of Mr. D., and that such injustice still exists, I see no reason why you should relinquish your claim; but if that injustice should be actually removed I cannot see how it can be any reflection upon you to relinquish a claim which was taken up clearly and dis tinctly in consequence of such removed injustice.” — The facts of this case are worth recording, as an illustration of the working of the old tithe system. A rich grazier in the union of Emlafad gradually acquired possession of several large farms in one of the parishes. These he converted into pasture, in which condition they were tithe-free. It is true, the incumbent was entitled to the tenth lamb and the tenth fleece of wool ; but the grazier, to avoid paying either, was in the habit of removing his sheep-walks from one portion to another of the wide territory he occupied in the county. He frequently avowed that he would never allow hay or oats to be grown till Mr. Garrett, the incumbent, would agree to accept a fair titheable value on the produce. But expert as he was in dodging the tithe-proctor, the parson managed to seize some lambs and fleeces, and the sum of £60 was due to him. The grazier, however, declared publicly that he would sooner pay £500 than yield to a demand for tithes on wool and lambs. An attempt to settle the matter by arbitration having failed, it was alleged that he sought to starve Mr. Garrett into compliance, by withholding all tithe of every kind for the harvests of 1818 and 1819. He was then cited to the Ecclesiastical Court for tithe due on
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tillage, and a bill in Chancery was filed against him for the tithe due on wool and lambs. Next he was sued for the extensive crop of potatoes on his lands. This tithe, though legal, and paid in many parts of Ireland, had not hitherto been demanded in that district. In this case it was, how ever, held to be just, inasmuch as the farmer received £8 or £9 an acre from the cottiers for the privilege of sowing and removing the crops from the land. Of course, in such a case the poor had to pay the tithe also. Therefore, many gentle men of the county, feeling that an oppressive impost on the poor was about to be introduced, called a public meeting, raised subscriptions, appointed a tithe committee, and adopted memorials to the Viceroy, the Metropolitan, and the Diocesan. Colonel Cooper, one of the principal Protestant landlords, became the leader of the movement. The war was a pro tracted one; for in 1 821 the Archbishop wrote to Mr. Garrett, stating that he would on no account advise him to relinquish the suit, without being fully secured in 1hat,ilie deprivation of which first occasioned him to seek the tithe of potatoes, adding, “I have no hesitation in saying, that were you in my diocese I would call my clergy together, and head an association and subscription to cany on the contest in which such a powerful combination is opposed to you.”
On the 15th of May, 1822, Mr. S. Cooper, member for the county of Sligo, presented a petition to the House of Commons from that county, complaining of the claim recently set up by Mr. Garrett to tithe upon potatoes, no such claim having ever before been asserted in that quarter of the country. Mr. Goulburn, then Chief Secretary, to whom the archbishop had communicated the particulars, explained the case to the House, and in the course of his speech said : — “ Every man who knew the state of Ireland, knew the difficulties which existed in getting tithes at all. The land was generally let at a rent exceeding its value. The leases were so framed with clauses for duties performed and articles furnished, that the landlord had the first oppor tunity of claiming his due. Then came the clergyman, after the land was stripped, to lose his right altogether, or to take
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process at law, as the last hope of obtaining it.” The deci sions of the courts were ultimately in favour of Mr. Garrett, and Mr. I), was forced to submit to a composition.”*
Another of the periodic famines with which some districts in Connaught were so often visited occurred in 1822. The Archbishop exerted himself as usual to mitigate distress, in organizing relief committees and contributing most liberally himself. Among the tributes of gratitude which he received, was one from a Galway priest, the Rev. T. E. Gill, who prefixed to a charity sermon which he published the following dedication to the Protestant Arch bishop. It will be read with astonishment by the clergy of both churches in these days of comparative intolerance and exclusiveness : —
“ TO THE HON. AND MOST REVEREND POWER LE POER TRENCH, LORD ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM.
“My LOUD— Your exertions in these distracted times claim the tribute of a people’s thanks. Without distinction of creed you have lent a willing ear to the cry of the poor, and a liberal hand to their alarming necessities. Tully was called, in his day, the father of his country. You, my lord, in our days, have acquired a name, combining in its signification the noblest qualities of our nature, the father of the fatherless. ‘Tis engraved in our hearts ; ‘tis impressed on our memories ; it can never be forgotten. Entering, then, into the universal feeling, I take the liberty of inscribing to your Grace my feeble efforts in the same great cause, and of subscribing myself, with the liveliest admiration of your virtues,
Your Grace’s most obedient humble servant,
“ THE AUTHOR.
“ Galway, August 24th, 1822.”
How shocked Archbishop MacHale would be if one of his clergy now published a sermon alluding to his heretic competitor in the same see in the following terms : — “ I call on them to co-operate with the wise appropriation already begun in favour of the distressed and sickly of the com munity by his Grace of Tuam, with that piety and zeal, with that ardent and indefatigable industry, that ever characterize his efforts, and breathe on his actions an unearthly lustre.”
* “ Memoir of the last Archbishop of Tuam.” By Rev. J. D’Arcy Sirr, D.D. Page 104, &c.
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72 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Referring to British liberality during the distress, the reverend Celt, with all the fervour and florid eloquence of his race, exclaimed: — “Oh! we shall fondly entwine the loved shamrock of our valley with the fostering rose. They shall grow lovingly together. Their fragrance shall mingle like the incense of love ; the dew-drops that will glisten on their leaves shall be like the tears of some celestial sympathy, We shall plant them in the sunniest beds of our gardens as a grateful memorial of this generous people. Religious and political differences no longer remembered, our misfortunes have at length providentially accomplished what our brighter hours could never effect. No longer eyeing each other with distrust, the Irishman shall strain his English neighbour to his heart. Both shal] kneel at the same shrine — yes, both shall worship at the same burning altar of charity !”
The Distress Committee for the town and county of Gal way, at a meeting held in September, 1822, the Rev. Dr. Ffrench, the Roman Catholic warden, in the chair, passed a resolution expressing their congratulations on the success that had crowned the archbishop’s efforts to alleviate “ the unpre cedented intensity of wretchedness “ under which the people had so long suffered, and offering their humble tribute of affectionate gratitude, and then proceeds in a similar strain : — “ We do not fear to intrude upon the august seclusion of those virtues, which have been so unceasingly exerted in abating the misery and in ameliorating the condition of the people of this district. More glorious by your actions than even by your exalted station, you proceeded in the exercise of your sacred ministry, and, with a singular self-devotion, you interposed between the victims of contagion and the grave — you have fulfilled your holy task, and having reached the highest point of genuine glory, you now return to your home, hailed by the benedictions of a grateful, affectionate, and applauding people. That your Grace may live long to contemplate the good effects of your beneficent interposition is our most sincere and fervent prayer.”
In 1824, Bishop Jebb, in a speech on the Irish Tithes Composition Amendment Bill, in the House of Lords, referred
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to this season of distress in language which throws some more light on the conduct of the Irish landlords in those times. Dr. Jebb said : — “Application for assistance was made to the absentee proprietors, who annually abstract from that county (Gal way) the sum of £83,000. And what was the amount of their congregated munificence ? My lords, it was £83 ! Not a farthing in the pound of their annual Irish income.” The admirable conduct of the Established clergy at that time made a deep impression on the hearts of the Roman Catholic peasantry. Bishop Jebb proceeded : — “ In many parts of that country, especially those parts where the clergy have least professional employment, they are the chief, too frequently the sole moral prop and stay ; and from the highest to the lowest rank and order, they are inde fatigable in every social and civil service. In that very province from which I have adduced a melancholy instance of absentee penury, during the same calamitous season of 1822, it pleased Providence to raise up a diffusive instru ment of good, and that instrument a Churchman. If the London Distress Committee, if its honourable and worthy chairman, were asked, who, at that period, stood foremost in every act of beneficence and labour of love, they would with one voice pronounce the Archbishop of Tuam ; from morning to night, from extremity to extremity of his province, at once the mainspring, the regulator, the minute-hand of the whole charitable system. As distress deepened and spread abroad, he multiplied himself with a sort of moral ubiquity. He proved himself worthy to rank with ‘ Marseilles’ good Bishop,’ and haiid-in-hand with him go down to the latest posterity, among the benefactors of mankind.”
There was some surplus of the charitable funds remaining which Archbishop Trench laboured to utilize for the en couragement of the growth of flax. He purchased wheels, reels, and other things necessary for this purpose, and set the women spinning, and the men weaving, cultivating self- reliance by advancing loans to be repaid in small weekly instalments. The Rev. John D’Arcy, of Galway, co-operated efficiently in this industrial movement, and was the first to
374 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
establish a savings’ bank in that town. Such services ren dered to his country by a prelate of the Established Church deserved to be the more gratefully remembered, because they are unfortunately so exceptional.
The metropolitan of Connaught had certainly ample means for the exercise of benevolence. Ardagh as well as Killala and Achonry was held by him in commend am till the Church Temporalities Act transferred it, together with Elphiii, to the Bishop of Kilmore. The archbishopric was, in fact, a sort of principality, and as a prince of the Church Dr. Trench enjoyed it for a period of about forty years. He might with such revenues have enjoyed life in London, or on the Continent, like some of his brethren, especially in times when the public were not so exacting as they are now ; and when we recollect that the bishops as well as the clergy were apt to consider the incomes they derived from the Church as much their own property, to do with it what they pleased, as the estate of any private gentle man. Although Archbishop Trench held this opinion, he did not act upon it, but seemed evidently conscious that he was a trustee, and that he was bound to reside, labour, and spend for the benefit of the population in the midst of which he was placed, with such magnificent endowments, by the State. The benefit of his expenditure in such a poor dis trict of country was highly appreciated by all classes. By the Church Temporalities Act, Killala and Achonry were added to the already ample territory over which he was called to preside. On this occasion the greatest possible anxiety was felt at Tuam lest his Grace should remove to the palace of Killala, A public meeting was therefore con vened, and an address presented, signed by the sovereign, as chairman, and by 280 of the principal inhabitants, nearly all Roman Catholics. In reply to this address he wTrote, that if he were to consult his own feelings he should have little difficulty in determining where his future residence should be. But he said, “Inasmuch as I feel (humanly speak ing) that the cause of vital religion, the establishment of the Redeemer’s kingdom upon the earth, and the general
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interests of the Church of Christ, may be involved in the question, I dare not hastily and unadvisedly decide upon a measure so awfully responsible. I have, therefore, prayed the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to grant me a short time for deliberate consideration, for humble prayer to Almighty God for direction, and for a spirit altogether abstracted from self, before I give my final answer to their requisition.” He gave that answer on the llth of June, 1834. “I have,” he said, “this day sent my final answer to the requisition from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, that I should declare whether I would make Killala my residence, and that of the bishops of Tuam for ever, in which I have expressed that I feel it my duty to continue such residence at Tuam, and thus my connexion with my friends and neighbours will be extended to the end of my life.” Tumultuous joy was produced by this announcement. Large bonfires blazed in the street, and the houses were brilliantly illuminated. But in proportion to this exultation was the despair of Killala, To the earnest appeal of the inhabitants not to leave them destitute of a bishop, his Grace replied: — “If the dire consequences you so feelingly apprehend would result from my non-residence at Killala, and from the 11011- residence there of my successors the future bishops of Tuam, what must I anticipate will be the fate of the comparatively few Protestants around me, and in the other parts of the county of Galway, and the more southern parts of the county of Mayo, should I desert them, and deprive them for ever of the fatherly care and watchful eye of the [appointed] shepherd of their souls ? Could I dare to leave them un protected, unsupported, exposed to persecution, to bitter trials, and ultimately compelled to seek that protection in a foreign country of which they were deprived in their own ? All that I would, I cannot do ; I would, therefore, decide upon that which appears to me the least injurious to the cause of vital religion and the general interests of the Church. I may err in my judgment, but I am sure you, gentlemen, will do justice to the purity of my motives and the conscientious sense of duty that leads me to the con-
376 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
elusion that I ought to establish the future residence of the bishops of Tuam where it now is.”
His meek spirit was roused almost to indignation by the plans of further Church reform which were before Parlia ment in 1835. He wrote the heads of a speech that he intended to deliver in the House of Lords, in which he strongly insisted on the missionary character of the Irish clergy. “ They were sent,” he said, “ as the apostles of old were sent, to preach the Gospel to every creature, whether Protestants of their own immediate communion, or Dissen ters, or Roman Catholics, or Jews, or Turks.” He con sidered a parochial minister responsible for every living soul within his parish. He seemed to hope that the whole pro vince would soon turn over to the Establishment. “ The fields,” he said, “are white already to the harvest.” He protested, therefore, against the clause of the bill, which would appropriate any part of the undoubted property of the Church to any but purely ecclesiastical purposes, and denounced the reform as a monstrous measure. He also raised his voice against any revision of the composition for tithes in Ireland, settled under various Acts of Parliament. “ Thus,” says his biographer, the Rev. Dr. Sirr, “ the Arch bishop at once put his foot upon the whole of this infamous system of legislation, when he prepared to tell the House of Lords, that our political empirics had mistaken the whole character of the Established Church. The Church was established in the land riot because the whole community did, but in order that the whole community might agree with her. She was introduced as leaven into the lump that the whole might be leavened. It Avas now uiiblushingly proposed that she should be withdrawn from every place which was apparently pre-occupied by the Romish schism. Much profound socratic argumentation was thrown away on the subject, and much criminal coquetting employed in honour of a hateful and disgusting voluntaryism. Till she can accomplish the total downfall of the establishment, the Church of Rome in Ireland, that most anomalous of schis- matical bodies, which ever had existence, considers it her
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policy to applaud the voluntaries and to boast of the advan tage of voluntaryism in religion.*
The theory of Church and State in Ireland thus clearly propounded, Archbishop Trench laboured to carry out to the fullest extent during his long career in Connaught. The ex periment was made under the most favourable circumstances. All along the Atlantic coast, and for some miles inland, there was a dense Roman Catholic population whose spirits had been broken by periodic famines, and they were pretty much in the condition of the Celtic race after the Elizabethan wars. The feudal spirit still remained in full force beyond the Shannon, and many of the landed proprietors had im bibed the spirit of their Archbishop, and warmly co-operated with him in the propagation of Evangelism. His owTn brother was the head of one of the greatest of the old aristocratic houses of the province — the house of Clancarty, a fact which, in such a rank-worshipping community, must have given his Grace an immense prestige, which a prelate sprung from the people, such as Ellington, Mant, or Magee, could not possess. The clergy, too, of the united dioceses were most zealous in prosecuting the missionary work; and they did so with the great advantage of being the almoners of very large funds, contributed in England for the relief of distress in their respective parishes. Some of them learned to preach in the Irish language, and they were aided by a host of Scripture-readers, and by school-masters, supported by funds dispensed by societies having their head-quarters in London. Such were the conditions under which the ex periment was made by this wealthy and popular prelate during his long public life, and which was continued still more systematically and with more effective organization by his successor, the late Lord Plunket. We shall see with what result. So great was the destitution in 1831 that, according to the report of one of the committees, a popula tion estimated in the county of Mayo at 293,000 souls, no fewer than 226,532, or more than two-thirds of the whole people, had been placed on the charity lists. The misery of * Memoir, p. 326.
378 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the people is described as having been, affecting in the extreme ; “ but,” remarked one of the clergy, “ it is the misery which ever afflicts this wretched land ; the misery not of this year alone, but of every year — a misery the cause of which lies deeper than in the failure of the crops.” The Protestants of those districts were, however, so far above the level of destitution that, out of an allocation of 203 tons of meal made by the central committee at Gal way, a single ton was set apart with this entry — “ To the poor Protestants, one ton.” Abuses under such a state of things were in evitable, and the effect was so demoralizing that the benevolent archbishop felt constrained to write : —
“ Starved toil is now become a trade, and provisions are sent in abundance where no calamity occurred, and where there is no extraordinary want to warrant it. The cry is, as the provision is going, why should not this parish and that parish get its share ? The demand for relief upon the central committee every week increases; and I am taught to believe what they cannot supply the government will. Places that I know were never in less want than they are this year, have received large supplies of meal. This is a sad precedent, and I fear we shall not for a long time recover it. My means would not last a day, if I had not most con scientiously and justly drawn the line I did, and which I will adhere to to the end.”
There was not one tenant 011 a large estate who was not returned “ destitute.” Many of them were in affluent cir cumstances. At the head of one list was a farmer who had a large stock of cattle, and a very large supply of oatenmeal for sale ; and he had actually some hundreds of pounds deposited for safe keeping with one of the churchwardens of his parish. None of the persons returned in some of those lists were suffering any degree of want greater than was usual at that period of the year. The Archbishop re ceived altogether for distribution on this occasion, from public and private sources, the sum of £5,667, of which sum he returned £2,839 as not being required. There was another season of scarcity in. 1835, but at that time the
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distress of the Protestant clergy themselves in other parts of the country where agitation against tithes was successful, called for all the assistance that could be afforded by the bishops and others.
If the missionary efforts of the Archbishop and his clergy could have been felt by the Roman Catholic population to be purely spiritual in their object, they would, no doubt, have been much more effectual. But they were unfortu nately identified with the cause of Protestant ascendancy, and the maintenance of .a political system which excluded from the Legislature all persons holding the creed of the mass of the population. For two or three }7ears preceding Catholic Emancipation, the Protestant clergy were most active in agitating against that measure, and in their efforts to prove that Roman Catholics could not be bound by the most solemn oaths. The meetings of the Hibernian Bible Society, which were held throughout the country, were con verted into a sort of political propagandisin, designed to keep the bulk of the Irish population out of the pale of the Constitution, although Emancipation was part of the policy by which the Union was effected, and failed only because George III. felt bound by his coronation oath to put his veto upon the concession, It was so with respect to all other Protestant societies which appealed to the public for support. In fact, there was a regular crusade against the Church of Rome in Ireland at that time, and, as might be expected, the Archbishop of Tuani lent his powerful aid to the movement. But that movement met with the fierce antagonism of the leaders of the Catholic Association. O’ Council, Shell, and others, with some of the most eloquent of the priests, entered the arena of controversy, and inter rupted the proceedings of the Protestant meetings, especially where they were held in the county court-houses and other secular buildings. On the 19th of October, 1824, a meeting of the Bible Society was held in the sessions-house at Loughrea, in the county of Galway. The Archbishop was announced to take the chair, and the local clergy imprudently issued a circular, directed indiscriminately to all persons in
380 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the neighbourhood of any respectability, commencing with the words, “ Yon are kindly invited to attend the annual meeting of the county Galway branch of the Hibernian Bible Society.” This appeal was responded to by the Rev. Peter Daly, P.P., of Galway, and other priests, accompanied by some Roman Catholic gentlemen, and backed by a mass of the Roman Catholic population who crowded to the court-house. The Rev. B. W. Mathias, of Dublin, and the Rev. Dr. Urwick, an Independent, attended as a deputation from the parent society. They found the court-house crowded to excess, but it was a com fort to observe that Major Warburton was there with the police under his com mand, to protect the Protestants from violence. They made way for the Archbishop, who was voted to the chair. “ Never,” wrote Dr. Urwick, “ shall 1 forget the view on looking round. On the right in the jury-box were ranged a number of Roman Catholic clergymen, five of whom seemed ready to prove themselves the champions of the day. Im mediately below at the witness-table were a few ladies. Li front was a dense mass of human heads ; along the wall on the left, under the windows, Avere some clerical and other friends of the Protestant cause. A brief report was read, and its adoption moved and seconded ; but when the Arch bishop rose to put the motion, Father Daly, of Galway, claimed the right of addressing the meeting, pleading the circular that had been sent to the Catholic bishop of Clonfert, among others. He said he wished the subject to be fairly discussed, and though he was not a subscriber, he might be induced by argument to change his mind and join the Society. He was told by the chairman that arrange ments for discussion might be made after the business of the meeting was over. But the priests claimed their right to be heard then and there ; the mob became excited, clamour and confusion arose, the frightened women were handed out through the windows. It was then proposed by the Roman Catholic party that the Archbishop should leave the chair, and that it should be taken by Mr. Guthrie, a liberal Protestant barrister. But the Archbishop, who
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was a man of courage and firmness, said — “ I shall not leave this chair, Mr. Daly, until the business of this day is gone through, unless I am forced out of it — unless I am forced out of it.” This emphatic declaration disconcerted the leaders. But the mob, whose brethren his Grace had so often fed, vociferated — “ Turn him out, turn him out !” “ And,” said Dr. Urwick, “ if demoniac rage was ever indi cated in human countenances, it was in the mass before us then. Circumstanced as we were, pent up amid such sights and sounds, with 110 way of escape, it would have been little disgrace if even a stout heart had quailed. We had, however, one who showed no fear. His Grace lost not his self-possession for an instant, though, undoubtedly, had violence been done, he would have been the first victim/’ Mr. Guthrie then attempted to speak, sustained by the clamours of the multitude, but the chairman persistently refused to hear him, and the conflict lasted for about two hours, till at last it was whispered that the military were coming. It was not until his party had sounded a retreat that the Archbishop felt he had no choice left. He and other friends of the society withdrew, “ egress for flight being readily afforded them.”* The triumphant party then held a meeting of their own, at which they passed a resolu tion detailing the circumstances of the previous clamour, in which they stated “ that the chairman by his orders and example procured many of the members of the Bible Society to keep up a most indecent clamour for the avowed purpose of stifling the voices of any persons who might differ in sentiments from the Archbishop ; and at length his conduct having become so outrageous, even in the opinion of some of his own party, that a very general call was heard to appoint another chairman, upon which he declared he would remain there for a month to carry his own object into effect ; but after a considerable time occupied in clamour, excited by himself, he vacated the chair and left the meeting ; where fore we view with disgust and indignation the arbitrary conduct of the Archbishop.”
* Memoir, p. 471.
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They also resolved as follows — “ That we look with indig nation and horror at the introduction of a military party of the 10th Hussars into a public assembly of such a nature, with drawn swords, countenanced by the Protestant Arch bishop of Tuam, to intimidate, or perhaps to massacre, the Roman Catholic clergy and laity, who have been insidiously invited to this house, and who came with the hope of ex pressing their sentiments, and promoting any rational measure calculated to improve the morals and condition of society; and, at the same time, we cannot withhold from the military our approbation of their peaceable and orderly conduct, notwithstanding the intemperance and bad example of the Archbishop.”
The DM’ni Evening Post, to its credit be it recorded, did not endorse this denunciation of the courageous Archbishop. That journal, then the leading Liberal organ in Ireland, referring to the Galway proceedings, remarked : — “ We can never mention the name of Dr. Trench but with feelings of admiration and respect. We can never forget the conduct of this exemplary prelate in the year of famine, and wTe are satisfied, that the poor of his archdiocese will remember it with gratitude. While others, who, with a species of bitter irony are called the natural protectors of the poor, were uttering fine sentiments on the banks of the Thames, or the Seine, he was visiting every part of his extensive and starving see, distributing food and raiment and medicine, comforting the afflicted, and saving hundreds from the jaws of death.”
People had then extravagant ideas of the revenues of the Irish bishops, which certainly derived some countenance from the enormous amount of personal property in the wills of some of the number, and which were the more readily accepted, because much of it was realized by renewal fines on the leases of Church lands. Mr. Eneas M’Donnell, a Roman Catholic gentleman, was in the habit of writing letters in defence of the Catholic cause in the great Whig organ of the time, the Morning Chronicle. In one of those letters, deploring the interruption of friendly relations between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Connaught, he said:
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“And really, sir, when we consider the vast official revenues of his Grace, who has, as I understand, recently refused the offer of £27,000 as a renewal for one single lease, it is not unreason able to expect some forbearance towards the Roman Catholic population, constituting as it does forty-nine fiftieths of the people of the district from which such revenues are obtained ; and the more particularly, as they do not receive, expect, or desire any professional services from his Grace in return for such public contributions to his wealth.”
To this statement the Archbishop made the following answer : — If I could give satisfactory value in the renewal of a lease under me for £30,000 I should have no hesitation in refusing to accept for it £27,000 ; and if my property (which I deny is a public contribution to my wealth), be ever so large, why should any man living envy me its possession, or betray jealousy on its account, more than on the account of the large possessions of any layman. My title to my estates is, at least, as good as that of any other man’s in the land ; and it is to be presumed, that the ex penditure of their proceeds in the hands of one whose station requires his residence upon them, will at least be as extensive and conscientious for the benefit of the community as that in the hands of any others, and its disturbance would involve the ruin of numerous families, and the violation of settle ments, of marriage articles, of wills, &c., &c. But in the case before us, Mr. Eneas M’Doimell understands what is not true. I have been twenty-three years upon the episcopal bench, and I never received, demanded, or refused the one- eighth part of £27,000 for the renewal of one lease ; and there are many of the most important and valuable leases under the sees of Tuam and Ardagh, some of which were not renewed for more or less time previous to the death of my predecessor, and none of which have ever been renewed by me, and I would willingly renew any one of them to the 25th of last month for less than one-eighth of £27,000.”
Another Bible meeting was held on the 1st of November following at Carrick-on-Shannon, in the county Leitrim. It was held in the court-house, and 600 respectable persons,
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among whom were several Roman Catholic priests, were admitted by ticket. One of them, Dr. M’Keon, attempted to address the meeting ; and it was ultimately arranged that there should be a public discussion between an equal number of Protestant clergymen and priests. Archbishop Trench wrote to the chairman, the Rev. W. A. Percy, stating that “nothing ought to be left undone in this most important crisis” and that he had sent one of his faithful clergy to Galway most strongly to urge the Warden, the Rev. James Daly, to be at Galway on the day appointed. The discussion took place 011 the 9th of November, between the Rev. Dr. M’Keon, George Brown, and Michael O’Beirne on the part of the Roman Catholics, and the Rev. W. Digby, G. Hamilton, and W. Bushe, on the part of the Protestants, the question being, “ The Bible as a rule of faith.” The Archbishop was well pleased with the result.
In August, 1827, he presided at a Church missionary meeting in the town of Galway, when Mr. O’Cormell was there at the assizes. Handbills Avere circulated intimating that Mr. O’Comiell would attend the meeting, arid as a matter of course the place was crowded. He entered during the proceedings, and as soon as one of the speakers had done, presented himself to the notice of the chairman, who told him that he could not hear any one who was not a member of the society. Mr. O’Coniiell said, “ I remember, my lord, to have heard a story once of an interpreter, who was a very good sort of a man, and a professed linguist, but who unfor tunately knew not a word of the language spoken by either of the two persons for whom he undertook to interpret, and exactly like to him is your Grace’s aid-de-camp, he does not understand one word of what you and I, who are discussing very quietly the question of courtesy or right, are saying, and yet stands up and offers to arbitrate between us.” Thus he went on again in his rambling strain, evidently at a loss to know what exactly he would be at. “ Mr. Freeland, and he meant him no personal disrespect, found one doctrine in the Bible and his Grace found another. Let them settle their differences between themselves before they come to convert us.
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Let them toss up for it ! There is a story of two cats who were constantly quarrelling. They were locked up in a room one night, and in the morning they were found to have eaten one another up except their tails. Let your lordship and that gentleman (looking at Mr. F.) be shut up together like these cats The Roman Catholics had con verted 4,000 in China. Two bishops and some priests had been martyred for their religion. Why did not your lordship tell that to the meeting ? He would convict his lordship before a jury (a laugh), because he did not tell the meeting of the murder of the Catholic bishops and priests.”
Mr. Topp, a lay gentleman, who attended from the parent society, thus describes the scene : — “ It was indeed a most triumphant day for the cause of God, and missions. The contrast must have been as striking to others as to myself, even to the numerous band of priests, and there were many there, as well as to the respectable and intelligent members of the Roman Catholic Church, who formed the great majority of our crowded and attentive assembly. Yes, there was a strong pictorial contrast of lights, and shadows — there was the calm unruffled forbearance of our Archbishop in the chair, unmoved by any ebullition of undue feeling, under coarse ribaldry, and personal insult, all evidently given vent for the purpose of raising the often expressed shout, and laugh, and clapping of hands, and waving of handkerchiefs. There was also the calm, the dignified, the holy reply of the Warden Daly breathing love, and pity, and forbearance, as he unravelled the mis-statements, corrected the erroneous assertions of the assailant, and vindicated the truth of God our SaAaour, and the sublime and Christian object of our society in sending forth the gospel of life and salvation to the ends of the earth. And there was in the dark back ground the man who called forth all this; trembling and ashamed as he felt the withering effect of Christian eloquence and Christian charity. Indeed so powerful was the effect, that Mr. O’Cormell rose immediately after the Warden had concluded, and to his own honour and credit be it now recorded, he complimented the Warden in the handsomest
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manner he could, saying, ‘ Warden Daly was a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian, and Avould to God all others were like him !’ But I said the day was most triumphant. The event gave notoriety to our proceedings. It was then the assizes of Galway, and the next day the church was unusually crowded. Many of the respectable members of the bar attended, and a sum of near £24 was collected, so that our God herein made the wrath of man to praise him.”
In October of the same year commenced another collision between the Archbishop and the priesthood. The Rev. Thomas Maguire, generally called Father Maguire, the celebrated controversialist, delivered a speech at a public meeting at the town of Roscommon, in which he was reported to have stated that within the last fortnight a Protestant rector waited on him, bearing to him a letter from an arch bishop, “ making an offer of £1,000 in hand, and a living of £800 a year if he would abjure the Catholic religion and become a Protestant parson.” This statement became the subject of comment in the newspapers, and it was stated that Dr. Trench was the archbishop intended. The libel was conveyed to the Mominy Herald by its Dublin corre spondent. The Dublin Register commented upon the alleged transaction with the heading, “ Horrible and almost incredible depravity.” But the Archbishop, feeling that the imputation was most injurious to the Establishment, com menced legal proceedings, and all the newspapers had to apologize ; and Mr. Maguire himself had to explain away the statement, and throw the blame upon the reporters. Mr. Michael Stauriton, proprietor of the Mornuuj Register, excused himself by saying—” I only credited what I saw in print, or what thousands besides myself credited. But that all originated in mistake or misrepresentation, which was not mine, and that the Archbishop of Tuam and his venerable brethren were altogether blameless, and, of course, as far as those publications were concerned, grossly and unwarrantably misrepresented, I was as ready at the earliest moment, as I am now, to testify.”
In an article in the Register Mr. Staunton said : — “ There
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is not now a single man in the country who has the remotest suspicion that the Archbishop of Tuam had the least concern with the offer to the Rev. Mr. Maguire, which
was alluded to at the Roscommon meeting It
becomes us now to make a statement, which it was not at all necessary to do in vindication of his Grace, and which it would have been obviously not proper to do pending the late proceedings in the Exchequer — and it is this, that the Rev. Mr. Maguire denies, and we need not say truly denies, that he ever alleged that he had received any offer of the nature alluded to from the Archbishop of Tuam.”
The action against the Movn’tny Herald, however, pro ceeded in the Court of Common Pleas, London, before the Chief Justice, Sir William Draper, and the Archbishop got £50 damages. In his charge the Judge referred to what was then called “the New Reformation” in Ireland, and expressed a hope that it would turn out a real and extensive reforma tion ; but he added : — “ God forbid that it should ever be accomplished in any degree by such infamous and corrupt practices as are here imputed to the Archbishop of Tuam.” A motion was afterwards made to set aside the verdict, but it was confirmed by the unanimous decision of the Bench. In Dublin the prosecution against Mr. Stauiitoii came on for trial, after many delays in the Court of Queen’s Bench, just when Catholic Emancipation was announced, on the 23rd of February, 1829. Mr. Sheil, who was counsel for Mr. Staunton, after alluding to the apologies which were tendered, added : — “ If before this trial it was judicious and praiseworthy to tender this reparation to so distinguished an ecclesiastic, assuredly it is at this moment a still easier discharge of duty to do so, when the minds of every one of us should be brought into reconciliation, and should yield to the influence of ameliorating events. In the mild tem perature of this new political season, better feelings should spring up, and the hearts of men, opening and expanding in this prosperous and sunny time, should be fertile in the production of good and kindly emotions. The publication of which the venerable prosecutor complains was written
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in the midst of deep animosities and of factious but not unnatural virulence. The trial which has originated from them takes place when splendid anticipations, which are almost equivalent in their moral result to their glorious realization, are presented to us ; and it behoves every indi vidual to avail himself of every the least occasion which is afforded him, to render the national mind more susceptible of prosperity.” The learned gentleman closed his speech, after referring to Dr. Murray’s mode of meeting slander, in these words: — “The Archbishop of Tuam bears the same armour, and should rely equally upon it. He is a good man, mistaken, in my opinion, in his particular views, but his conduct is irreproachable ; and he has a humane and Chris tian heart. Let him bid defiance to accusation, and, above all, let him not, upon a surmise that his character is assailed, go through such a process of purification as this. There is no blot upon his name, and he needs no such ablution as is afforded in this court. I began by expressing my regret that he should so far have misapprehended the meaning of the defendant ; and in concluding, I unaffectedly reiterate the assurances of my client, that he is deeply sorry that he should have given room to his Grace to indulge in such ‘fantastical misconception.’ “
The new Reformation shone at that period, like a glorious dream in the imagination of English as well as Irish Church men, and then as well as now Tuam was regarded as “the bright spot of the Irish Establishment.” It is true the movement which first received that name began in the county of Cavan under the auspices of Lord Farnham. Among his tenantry, and those of the neighbouring gentry who sympathized with him and caught the holy contagion of missionary zeal, which was to supersede Catholic Eman cipation by consuming Catholicism, and melting off the spiritual chains of the people, there were many who “ read their recantations “ in the parish churches of Cavan and Kingscourt. But in that neighbourhood the light that Hashed so vividly for a time soon faded, and after the pass ing of Emancipation the zeal of many Protestants waxed
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cold, and the battle against Popery was relinquished. In Connaught, however, it was not so, and the sanguine spirit of the Archbishop hoped on while his ample resources helped to supply the sinews of war which, as commander-in-chief, he directed. It is interesting to read now what the great Church organ of the time — the British Critic — thought of the movement. In the number for January, 1828, there was an elaborate article on “ the Irish Reformation.” “ As in Cavan,” remarked the writer, “an impulse seems to have been given by the superintending zeal of one eminent in dividual, so the province of Connaught, the peculiar realm of Irish Popery has experienced the active exertions of a metropolitan, who has not admonished his clergy with the cold and selfish counsels of worldly prudence to abstain from provoking the bigotry of surrounding multitudes, but has urged them with the most earnest exhortations to make known the truths of religion to an ignorant and deluded peasantry. In Cavan a single year of zealous superintend ence seems to have been sufficient for giving the impulse decisive of that reformation, for which preparation had al ready been made.” But Connaught, it seems, did not require that preparation. “ A province has begun to receive and to embrace the new reformation.” This was the more wonderful, for according to the missionary reports from which the British Critic derived his impressions, the greater part of the Roman Catholic inhabitants were represented as “ meriting equally the name of pagans or Mahometans as of Christians.” Their religion was said to be composed of mere superstitions — “the efficacy of holy wells, holy trees, holy stones, of charms and gospels — not the Gospel of the Scriptures, but amulets prepared by the priests, scapulars, jubilees, penances, and purchased absolutions.” Galway was described as the very head-quarters of Irish Popery, and there an impression was made. In proportion, as Protestantism made progress, Popery assumed a more hostile attitude. The Bible was described as the book of the devil, the poison of souls, and the key to perdition, and the people were told the mission aries who forced it upon them might lawfully be kicked out
390 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of doors, have their skulls cracked, or be drowned in bog- holes. “Even this hostility, however,” said the contem porary Critic, “ works for good. Popish authority is found to stretch itself, until at last it must break; while Protestant conciliation will no longer squander itself away at the ex pense of consistency.”
But what had the Established clergy with their Arch bishop and his suffragans been doing for generations before in return for the revenues granted them by the State ? How did it happen, as this writer truly states, that “ heretofore the Roman Catholic peasantry had been wholly abandoned to the care of their clergy, whom they had accordingly re garded as the only friends of the poor, having no personal knowledge of their landlords except when a Parliamentary election brought them together for a purpose in which the landlords alone were concerned?’’ The Rev. M. H. Seymour, a most zealous missionary, informed Dr. Sirr that the Arch bishop’s visit to hold a confirmation in the parish of Kille- nummery was the first episcopal visit for such a purpose at that place for ninety years, in consequence of which old women came forward to be confirmed. Archbishop Beres- ford “had found it impossible to penetrate into Connemara,” and a church which had been built at Ballinahinch was never consecrated or used till it became a ruin, and not one stone remained upon another” — too fitting an emblem, spiri tually, of the Church Establishment in Connaught, Unless the poor abandoned Protestants scattered through that western region had chosen to live like heathens, they must have asked the priest to marry them, baptize their children, and bury their dead. They did so ; and in this way the Church lost more members than she has been able to regain by all her Connaught missions. It is much to the credit of the last Archbishop that he made extraordinary exertions to recover the ground that had been lost, and to conquer fresh territory. He left no likely means unemployed for this purpose. He encouraged the planting of Scriptural schools in every direction, and their masters became a sort of local * Rev. Dr. Sirr.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 391
missionaries, arguing in season and out of season against “the errors of Popery.” He invited the ablest preachers and the best controversialists among the clergy in Dublin and elsewhere to traverse the province and preach up the new reformation. Feeling the great importance of the Irish language in preaching to the natives, of which the Rev. John Gregg, the present Bishop of Cork, gave him a striking illustration in his own person, the Archbishop caused an advertisement to be published stating that he had come to the determination of not receiving into holy orders after the 1st of January, 1832, any person for the ministry of that province not capable of reading to and addressing the people in their own native tongue. This w;is dated March 7th, 1830. But no such candidates presented themselves to his Grace, and this project, therefore, failed. Another plan of his had the same object. He wished to establish a college at Tuam, where the Irish language would be taught to candidates for the ministry who had graduated in the university, and in which they might be specially prepared for the missionary work among the natives. He sent a prospectus of the institution to his brethren on the bench soliciting their co-operation, but only one or two of them deigned to notice it even in the coldest manner, and the scheme fell to the ground. A project for establishing a Protestant colony on the waste lands of Connemara he also regarded with favour, and within a few years of his death this venerable prelate travelled all the way to the island of Achill to visit the missionary colony founded by the Rev. Edward Nangle. His carriage having broken down, he pursued his journey on an outside car. He died in the sixty-ninth year of his age, on the 26th of March, 1839, having filled the metropolitan see for the long period of forty years.
It may be safely said that, humanly speaking, no fitter agent could have been employed to extend the Reformation in Connaught, nor could more suitable instruments have been selected, than those which this truly good prelate em ployed, with unflagging zeal, for nearly half a century. But
392 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
he was himself part and parcel of the Protestant ascendancy —the political and the ecclesiastical system against which the national instincts of the people, whom he would enlighten, revolted. They suspected that even the efforts made osten sibly for the salvation of their souls were designed to exclude their race from the civil rights and privileges which Pro testants enjoyed, and they were easily taught that by con forming to Protestantism they would betray their country. They could riot help associating the new Reformation with the secular aspects of the Establishment, with ‘ the wealth and grandeur of the bishops, the exactions of the rector, and the visits of the tithe-proctor; and they felt that it would be base in them for such a cause to desert the priest, who had been their only friend, adviser, and guide for this world, as well as for the next. The Rev. Dr. Sirr, the author of this very instructive memoir of one of the best prelates that ever adorned the Establishment, unwittingly admits the failure of the Church as a missionary institution, and its cause, in the following passage : — “ The priests adopted a stratagem that, alas ! proved too successful in the issue. They subscribed for several copies of the Dublin Recj’iHter, a newspaper then the official organ of the Roman Catholic Association, and arming their emissaries with these, sent them to the discussion halls to read the speeches of Shiel and O’Connell, and the Bible was closed that they might drink in sedition, and admire the wonderful orations of these great Irishmen. Politics took the place of theology, and though priestcraft was humbled, popery was triumphant. A more wicked artifice was never resorted to to rivet the chains of ignorance ; but it is one which has been practised effectually on a larger scale, over the whole face of this un fortunate island.”*
* Memoir, p. 542.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 393
CHAPTER XX.
THE war against Romanism in Connaught, which Archbishop Trench had so persistently waged for forty years, was prose cuted, after a “brief truce, by his successor, the late Lord Plunket, and continued with more or less vigour, and a still larger measure of foreign aid, in the shape of funds from England. For some years, his nephew, and chaplain, now the Hon. Conyngham Plunket, was the most active agent of this crusade. That gentleman delivered an address before the Church Congress at Manchester in 1803, and which he has reprinted as a pamphlet, oh “The Church and the Census in Ireland.” This address contains some interesting statistics on Church progress. “ How deplorable,” he said, “was the state of the Church in Ireland at the commencement of the present century may be gathered from the fact, that out of 1,220 incumbents who in the year 1807 had charge of the 2,341 parishes of Ireland, no less than 397 were non-residents, while the cause of this non-residence in 1G9 instances was pluralism.” These figures were given in a Parliamentary return. Some improvement was shown at the end of a quarter of a century. In 1832, it appeared from the diocesan returns to the Privy Council Office, that the number of non residents had been reduced to 368, and the number of pluralists to 109. That is, the non-residents were persuaded to return to their duty at the rate of one per annum, and the pluralists were reduced at the rate of two per annum. This was not much to boast of in the way of Church reform for a quarter of a century. Mr. Plunket states, that the number of converts from the Church of Rome during that era of successful missionary labour which came to a crisis in 1828 was 2,357. Passing over that crisis, and the collapse that followed Catholic Emancipation, Mr. Plunket proceeds to trace Church progress from 1834 to 1861. He states that within that period 133 new incumbencies were formed within
394 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the Church, 30G new churches built, and 171 enlarged. During the same period the non-residents decreased from 868 to 150, and the pluralists, he says, became almost extinct. Mr. Beresford Hope was struck with Church progress in Ireland, and the feature of that progress which naturally attracted his attention most was cathedral restoration. He pointed to the cathedral movement in Armagh, and Dublin, and Limerick, where the churches have been restored, and to the proposed restorations grandly designed for Kilkenny, Cork, Belfast, and Tuam.
But the portion of Mr. Plunket’s address which is most to our purpose at present, relates to missions to Roman Catholics. He does not rest the claims of the Establishment on the fact that it has missionary duty to discharge towards Roman Catholics, and he says, “So far from this, I hold that were the Roman Catholics of Ireland all to become Presby terians to-morrow the rights of the Church in Ireland, both as regards her connexion with the State and the possession of her own property, would remain precisely as they are now.”* This is a very remarkable declaration. If 88 per cent, of the population of Ireland were Bible-reading Pres byterians, Mr. Pluiiket holds, that the other 12 per cent, being Episcopalians, would have a right to be the Established Church of the country, and to enjoy the whole of the national Church property. He proceeds then to enumerate the agencies by which the conversion of the Roman Catholics was sought — the Irish Society, the Scripture Readers’ Society, the Island and Coast Society, the Reformation Society, and the Irish Church Missions Society. These societies he describes as having been organized by Churchmen, conducted on Church principles, and directed by the bishops and clergy, being, in fact, essentially a Church movement. Perhaps it would be found, however, that the chief business of the clergy in con nexion with them consisted in receiving and disbursing funds which came for the most part from England. If any one had access to complete sets of the annual reports of those several societies for the last forty years he would find * “ The Church and the Census in Ireland,” p. 24.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 395
that the amount of British gold poured into Connaught during that time to subsidize the Established clergy, with their Scripture-readers and schoolmasters, in trying to convert the Roman Catholics, would be something enormous. But this is voluntary ism, not the work of the Establishment. The Established Church in Connaught deserves the credit of the missionary movement just as much as the landlords and their tenants deserve the credit of the English supplies that so often came to mitigate the famines that prevailed in that miserable province. The necessity of such extraneous efforts and contributions to bring the Gospel, and the means of grace, even to the few Protestants scattered here and there, proved that the Establishment had utterly failed to accomplish its object. It was paralysed and helpless, and its duty had to be done by others, with means drawn from the charity of the public in England. Let me quote a few of Mr. Plimket’s instances, supplied to him by clergymen of different localities. “The time,” writes one, “is fresh in my memory when in certain coast districts beyond this town (Skibbereen) and Ban try there were but six clergymen and six churches, but there are now in those districts sixteen clergymen, four of which are partially maintained from, the funds of the Additional Curates’ Fund Society, and fourteen churches, with public worship also in several school-houses.” Another states, that when he went to Dingle, in 1831, there were only five Protestants, four of whom went sometimes to mass. There was 110 church, no glebe-house, 110 Scriptural school, in any of the four parishes of the district. He testifies that the result of missionary work there was to add 1,000 converts to the Church, and that in another parish, of which he became rector, 150 men and women had left the Church of Rome and joined the Establishment. The Rev. S. H. Lewis counts 2,000 converts in Dingle in twenty-six years, and Mr. Plunket considers this an under-statemeiit. Dingle became a sort of Protestant colony, and the clan feeling came into operation in the work of conversion. Thus, the Rev. Mr. Moriarty, the chief missionary, was a convert, and had a large following of Moriartys, and the Rev. Dr,
390 ICELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Foley brought over a number of the Foleys. The latter gentleman paid a visit to America some years ago, and in his published account he says, “ Everywhere I met whole hosts of Dingle converts, holding the faith of their adoption with unwavering constancy. At one place, Boston, I addressed 400 persons, the greater number of whom were converts from Kerry, or had become converts since they removed to America.” A Limerick rector counts GOO converts in his parish since 1 849. Preaching in the Irish language by men of the same race, who sympathized with the people in their national feelings, proved singularly successful for a time in the mountainous districts of Kerry, on the Atlantic coast.
But Mr. Plunket turns to West Connaught as presenting the greatest results of the Church missionary movement. This is a tract of country bordering upon the Atlantic, arid comprising the districts of Achill, Erris. and Connemara, extending for 100 miles in length and twenty or thirty in breadth. Twenty-five years ago, that is about the time of the death of Archbishop Trench, who had been carrying on the missionary work there for forty years, the greatest number of congregations, says Mr. Plunket, which could be found within the district was 13, the number of churches being 7, and of clergymen 11. Within the same district there are now 57 separate congregations, 27 churches, and 35 clergymen. In the reign of Queen Anne, Sir Arthur Shaen introduced a Protestant colony in the northern part of West Connaught. There were also Protestant colonists settled southward near Gal way. The Rev. Mr. D’Arcy told me that there was a remnant of them when he went to Gal way about fifty years ago, but they had been utterly neglected, and as no clergyman of their own church ever went near them they were obliged to go to mass.
The Rev. Dr. Hume remarks, that “ It is peculiarly difficult to recover either those that have been perverted or their descendants ; yet the missionary fruits are two-fold, em bracing the Roman Catholic population, and the descendants of lapsed Protestants. The former are pure Celts, mild, docile, and gentle in their dispositions, far different from the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 397
Romanized Normans imported from England, who make up the dangerous classes of the worst counties, and constitute England’s ‘ great difficulty.’ “
The Rev. W. C. Plunket, in his account of a visit to the Connemara missions, says : — I learned with astonishment the extraordinary fact, that not more than a century ago one half of the population inhabiting this very district of Connemara were members of our own Church ; and that, consequently, in sending out missionaries into these districts, we are only, after all, carrying out the unquestionable duty of recovering the straying sheep that wandered but a few years ago from our own fold.”
But what was the condition, in a spiritual point of view, of the district of Derrygimla previous to 1848, after all that Archbishop Trench and his clergy had done during forty years ? “ There is but one answer. It was dark and barren. No ministry; no means of grace; no Bible, and no Protestants to read it, with the exception of four or five families residing in different and distant parts of the parish, who never assem bled for public Avorship, and never wont to any place of public worship, as the distance was too for; while many original Protestants, who came to reside there on farms,
G
suffered their children to be baptized by the priests — this being the natural result of intermarriages with Romanists — and the absence of all means of grace to counteract the evil influences and consequences that followed.”
This is the authentic report of results from the labours of the Connaught missions under Archbishop Trench. His successor has fortunately something more to show, as appears from the following table :—
[TABLE.
398 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
TABLE.
Estab lished Church
Estab lished Church
Increase.
Roman Catholics
Roman Catholics
Decrease.
and Methodists 1831.
on 1 v. 1861.
1831.
1861.
I. — Achill and Erris,
comprising benefices
1G9
965
—
30,549
24,023
—
II. — Non-Missionary
Ground,
—
—
—
—
—
—
III. — Bunlahinch,
Tourrnakeadv, Aas-
lei--li, and Castle
Kerke Missions, .
232
588
—
16,636
11,893
—
IV. — Connemara and
Arran, .
495
1,932
~
39,8GO
32,549
—
V. — 0 lighter ard,
Spiddul, i£c., .
543
893
—
29,099
20,994
—
1,439
4,378
2,939
116,144
89,459
26,685
Deduct Methodists, .
105
—
—
—
—
—
Total, .
1,274
4,378
3,104
116,144
89,459
26,685
Estal.d.
Estabd.
. I Roman
Roman
Church,
Church,
Increase. Catholics
Catholics
Decrease.
1831.
1861.
1831.
1861.
The following table, constructed from the census by the Rev. Dr. Hume, of Liverpool, gives the relative numbers of the religious denominations for each county in the province: —
CONNAUGHT.
Estab lished Church.
Metho dists.
Roman Catholics.
Presby terians.
All Others.
Gross Population.
Gal way Town,
837
127
15,621
189
193
16,967
Galway County.
7,365
279
246,330
39’’
145
254,511
Leitrim County,
9,488
879
94,006
338
33
104,744
Mayo County,
6,739
418
246,583
961
95
254,796
Roscornmon Cnuntv,
5,728
162
151,047
277
58
157,272
Sligo County,
10,438
778
112,436
931
262
124,845
Total of Connaught,
40,595
2,643
866,023
3,088
786
913,135
I have gi
;iven an account of a confirmation by the last Archbishop of Tuam, and of a visit which he paid to the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 399
Island of Achill. The following from Mr. Plunket’s pamphlet will serve as a companion picture : —
“ It is now fourteen years since (in the year 1849) I accompanied the Bishop of Tuam upon a tour of confirma tion through the district of Western Comiaught. There were upon the occasion of the confirmation 460 converts confirmed in Achill, and 401 in the district of Connemara, Two years afterwards I again accompanied the bishop upon a similar tour through the districts of Comieiiiara. The number of converts confirmed at that time was 712. Since that period there have been four more confirmations held within the mission districts, and the whole number of converts confirmed upon the six occasions referred to, as officially reported in returns drawn up at the time by the bishop, amounts to 3,090 ; of this number, 2,042 belong to the district of Connemara. As a proof that the work is not diminishing in that district, I may add that at the last of these confirmations, which I myself attended during the past three weeks, no less than 130 converts were confirmed from the parishes of Clifden and Ballinakill alone/’
Testimony to the reality of this work of conversion has been borne by many eminent persons who visited Connaught — Canon Wordsworth, the Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of Oxford, the Archbishop of Dublin, and many others. Yet the truth of history requires that I should not omit to mention the fact that great doubt has been thrown upon the correctness of the mission reports, and it has been publicly asserted that visiters have been imposed upon by the dexterous management of the agents in collecting together at particular places children and adults “ to make a fair show in the flesh.” Some distinguished clergymen of the Establishment in Belfast, Cork, and elsewhere, have openly impugned the reports, and have charged the conductors of the Irish Church Missions to their faces, in meetings of the clergy in Dublin, with publishing false statements about converts, and bribing children to attend their schools. In some cases where incumbents encouraged the controversial missionaries in their parishes, they have shut up the schools
400 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and lecture-rooms, on account of the alleged misconduct of the lay missionaries. A Cork clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Webster, in particular, openly denounced the missions in the newspapers, and reprobated the principle on which, as he alleged, they were conducted — that is, holding out temporal inducements to the children and others to receive religious instruction from teachers belonging to a church differing from their own. It was perhaps with the view of bearding the lion in his den that a meeting of the friends of the Irish Church Missions was held in the Protestant Hall, Cork, on the 4th of April, 1864. The Earl of Band on presided, and delivered a long speech. He defended with spirit the Rev. Mr. Dallas and the Rev. Mr. Eade, the chief managers of the society. He said they were constantly hearing attacks from Roman Catholics, at which they were not surprised, because it was the natural principle of self-defence — the principle on which Demetrius upheld the worship of Diana in Ephesus. But the attack became more serious when it was made by a Protestant. He declared his conviction, however, that the charges were utterly unfounded. Lord Bandon said it was alleged that the Irish Church Missions used means, which are described as bribery, to induce the starving Romanists to submit to their teaching, and hence the name of soupers had been applied to those who for the sake of a mess of pottage were ready to attend either classes or the schools, and to learn verses out of the Holy Scriptures, at the same time cursing those who had given them bread for so doing. “ The simple answer,” continued his lordship, “ to that is, that there is not a word of foundation for the whole. For my own part, I never could see the harm of giving a hungry child something to eat. Great, however, has been the work of the Irish Church Missions, and also that noble Irish Society. It and its supporters were like the sappers and miners who broke up the ground before the great army under Mr. Dallas advanced ; it was they undermined the fortress, while it remains for the Irish Church Missions to storm the citadel of Antichrist.”
Lord Bandon had a very simple method of regenerating
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 401
Ireland. It was only to give her the Bible. He quoted the “ golden rule “ for the management of this country, laid down, when upon his dying pillow, by the late Duke of York, who said — “ Develope her resources, despise her agitators, and give her the Bible.” Lord Bandoii concluded
O o
Avith the following enthusiastic peroration : — “ ‘ Give Ireland the Bible,’ has been echoed through the land, until the Catholic priests in some instances have been obliged to pretend to give it, though I believe most reluctantly. Give Ireland the Bible, and I believe you vvill see her take her place among the nations of the world. I believe we may say that as in that family of old there was joy when the repentant prodigal returned, so when this prodigal land of ours, which for nearly six centuries has wandered from the fold of Christ, and whose chequered history has been one continued record of anarchy, confusion, miseries, distresses, disappointments, and woe, shall have returned to her earlier and purer faith, she will be welcomed amidst the vaults of heaven with rapture and delight, and the angelic choir of heaven, re-tuning their harps, shall swell the notes of praise, ‘ Ireland was dead, but is alive again ; she was lost, but is found.’ “ The Rev. Mr. Benii, on the same occasion, said he knew that the society had been charged with bribing Romanists to become converts. The thing was absurd, and he didn’t envy the man who could charge his brother clergyman with being guilty of so great a crime. The Rev. Mr. Eade, now Eade Corey, Secretary of the Irish Church Missionary Society, defended it from the charge of bribery. He said : — “ But it had been asked, how were those converts made I Some broadly asserted that bribery was the power that produced them. He gave that a flat denial. Indeed, if this were true, not only would it be necessary to bribe the converts at first, supposing we were bad enough to do it, but a continued bribery would be also necessary, in order to retain them, and the converts thus made might at any moment increase their demand. The society must also bribe all the converts who had gone to America, to England, and Scotland. They must also bribe the numbers of converts
2 D
402 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
who had gone out from the West and elsewhere into domestic service, and into the army and navy. Such a system would be incredible and absurd. But what was the power by which they made converts ? It was by bringing the Scriptures to bear on the consciences of Roman Catholics. That was the power, and that alone. It has been said — and we are not at all ashamed of it — that food is given to the hungry children in the mission schools. True. But how does the matter stand ? The Roman Catholics themselves were the lirst to introduce it. At the time of the famine, food was given by them to the starving children in their schools to keep them alive. It way introduced by the Roman Catholics, and afterwards adopted by the Protestants. There are many of our schools in West Connaught where it is not given, and the poor children often support themselves by gathering f^oa-weed from the rocks. The food in our schools is given, not by the -society, but by henevol jiids. It
is not given as a bribe — it is given as charity. Those poor hungry, starving children would get more food in the Roman Catholic schools than we can ever give them. The power of the mission is not a miserable plate of stirabout ; it is something by far higher — it is the Scriptures brought to bear on the conscience.” This is in substance the defence of the procedure of the Society of Church Missions.
A correspondence arose out of the charge of bribery, which contained some interesting matter. On the 3rd of December, 1863, Mr. Eade wrote to Mr. Webster in the following terms : —
“ I have been informed from more than one quarter, that in a sermon preached by you in St. Nicholas’ Church, Cork, on Wednesday evening last, you stated, that the Society for Irish Church Missions bribed their supposed converts, and that you could prove that they did so.
“ As Missionary Secretary of this society, I. trust I may be permitted to ask you whether you made such an assertion, and if so, 011 what grounds; as the charge, if believed, would seriously injure the Society, not to say destroy the character of honourable men who are carrying on an important work
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 4()3
of Church extension in this country, who would indignantly repudiate such a charge.”
To this Mr. Webster replies as follows : — “ Any man may be fairly charged with bribery who gives money or any temporal assistance to his fellow- creature for doing anything that that fellow-creature believes to be wrong. With this kind of bribery I did charge the Irish Church Missions Society last Wednesday week, and I make the same charge on every occasion, in public or private, whenever the subject is naturally introduced to my notice. I see no reason still for withdrawing the charge.
“ You have schools to which Roman Catholics send their children to be taught Protestantism, and the parents of these children are influenced to do this by the food and clothes given in your schools. The money to buy this assistance may be collected locally in the various districts where the schools are situate, and the money collected in England may be devoted to the payment of agents and ‘Missionaries;’ but still the money for food is collected under the auspices of the Society, and with its full sanction. If the food and clothes are not given to tempt the children and adults to attend the classes in the schools, but given as mere charity, why is the food not given to those who refuse to attend the classes ? If Archbishop Cullen could afford to open good boarding schools for the poor Roman Catholics in Dublin, would he not at once fill these schools with Roman Catholic children, and empty the poor-houses ? What, then, is keeping the thousands of children away who refuse to enter your schools, and whose parents are willing to let them put up with the wretchedness of the poor-house ? There can, I think, be but one answer to this question, arid that is, the moral sense of right and ivmny, such as it is, in these parents, directs this part of their conduct. If you, then, offer such parents worldly inducements, ‘with the intention of tempting them to send their children to you, I believe your society is fairly chargeable with bribery. All this I explained to my congregation.”
In a subsequent letter Mr. Webster wrote : — “ I complain,
2D 2
404 IRELAND AXD HER CHURCHES.
not that temporal relief is given to our starving fellow- creatures, but that it is given on condition that they commit sin. You do not deny that if that relief is given to induce them to do what they believe to be wrong, the Roman Catholic commits sin who violates his conscience, and you sin doubly in offering the worldly inducement for sn.ch a purpose. You say, ‘Even, if under the teaching of Rome, some of them believed at ^fi r*t that they were doing wrong, they would soon discover,’ &”c. This is just the point I wish to dwell upon. I cannot see what good results may spring from evil, but I cannot believe that any results, however beneficial, could justify me in using unlawful means. You must acknowledge that the bread and clothes are given to the children and to the adults for the very purpose of bringing them to your schools.
‘‘You say that it is ‘customary in Ireland in all schools intended for the lowest class in the community’ to give food to the children. This is hardly correct, and I think you would find it difficult to point out a school where food is given to Roman Catholics to make them listen to Protestant teaching, except that school be conducted by the Ir’tnh. Church Missions Society, or by one of the few clergy in Ireland who approve of the principles of that society. Food and clothes, I know, are sometimes given; but then this assistance is given to the Roman Catholics whether they attend the Protestant instruction or not.
“Again, you say that the Roman Catholic children in Dublin who attend your schools ‘ could obtain, greater tem poral advantages in Roman Catholic schools or dormitories in the same locality.’ Probably you are unaware that the miserable relief that the Roman Catholics are endeavouring to give has been very laudably provided by them for the purpose of counteracting the system of temptation which tits Irish Church Mission* has instituted. You cannot surely mean to say that Archbishop Cullen is able to collect as much money in Dublin for the temporal relief of the countless thousands of Roman Catholics Avho are willing to receive it, as the Irish Church Missions Society collects in
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 405
all Ireland. At all events, as a Protestant, I should feel ashamed to enter into such a contest with any body of men. It appears to me to be wholly unworthy of Pro testantism to make the poverty of Roman Catholics an occasion of outbidding, or overreaching the heads of the Roman Catholic Church, and, therefore, as long as you tempt Roman Catholics, by a regular fixed system of relief, to prefer the interests of this world to those of the world to come, so long I must feel myself bound to make every protest in my power against the Irish Church Mixxlon* Society.
“ You quote an extract from a speech made by the Bishop of Oxford in Manchester. If his Lordship has been totally misinformed, I am very sorry for it; but I am fully per suaded he would see cause to change his mind if he were acquainted with the facts which I and many other clergy could have furnished. I also confess I am deeply grieved to see that many other Englishmen, some writers in the Times for example, have fallen into the same mistake, and have taken up the notion that th’j Ir’/^h Church Missions Society is really doing a good work in Ireland. My only comfort is that so much of the machinery of the Society is worked by Englishmen, and that in a few years, accord ingly, when they discover the mischief they have done, and the very imperfect grounds upon which they continued to believe they were working with success, they will not have to charge the Irish clergy with being the cause of their mistake.
“If it were necessary, I could give instances where the or dained agents of the Irish Church Missions paid Protestants to pretend they were Roman Catholics at your controversial meetings, and at these meetings to call these very ordained agents the hardest names. I could tell you of a school, of which it was reported that there were eighty Roman Ca tholics in attendance, when the fact was, not a sino-le Roman
7 O
Catholic ever entered the school, except some live or six wretched children who were sent from Dublin t>y the Irish Church Missions Society. I could tell you of a scene I
406 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
once witnessed at the same establishment, where, on a Sun day morning, large quantities of bread were given to Roman Catholics for learning a verse of Holy Scripture, and where these same people, in my presence, went away cursing the Protestants, and cursing the very persons who gave them the bread and taught them the verse. I could tell you of agents who were known to he charged with drunkenness and other vices, who entered in their reports that they were persecuted, when they merely got into broils in their drunk enness, and who were, in spite of the remonstrances of the Parish clergyman, retained in their offices. 1 could tell you of a report, made by one onbmed agent, that lie had made fourteen converts from Romanism in a certain locality, and who had to acknowledge, when 1 inquired closely into the matter, that these fourteen, pei i not beJoiig at all to
that locality — that they had been brought there by this agent himself from distant places, and lodged in a school-house, and then represented as converts from the locality where they had boon supported for a few weeks. These and many other facts I could report, and there are multitudes of clergy-
Ot/
men in Ireland who are able to bear a .similar testimony from their o\vn experience.”
Mr. Eade replies at j/reat length to the main charge of
loo o
bribery, and furnishes copious explanations of individual cases. Mr. J. C. Colquhoun, chairman of the General Com mittee, also took up his pen in defence of the missions, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph. Others also entered the lists. Much of the correspondence turned upon theories of conscience. Mr. Eade, the secretary, in one of his letters in the Cork Constitution, said: — “I do not wonder that Mr. Webster tries to escape from this painful position by a long and subtle dissertation oil “ conscience.” I think he would have been more conscientious if lie had not made a charge public before he was prepared to give publicly a proof of its being true.” But the editor interposed here with this re mark: — “Mr. Eade forgets that Mr. Webster offers the names if guaranteed against legal consequences. We should not notice this but that we do not wish to have our space occu-
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 407
pied with needless repetitions. Let the offer be accepted, or let the names be given privately to Mr. Eade, and let that gentleman either acknowledge that the promise has been redeemed or give a reason for maintaimng^that it has not. It is time that this part of the controversy were closed.”
There had been an investigation into the truth of the reports before the late Archbishop of Dublin, and just one month after that investigation, the Archbishop addressed a letter to the Rev. Mr. Dallas, datod November 20th, 1857. This letter deserves to be put upon permanent record, as a judicial deliverance upon the question of the integrity of the mission.
“My DEAR Sm,— You have given a, satisfactory explanation of the transaction relative to the money given to one of the attendants on the controversial classes. And, though it was an iinjiri’ueitt thing to let any money pass, as being likely to create suspicion, you must not imagine that I ever myself suspected the society of keeping pretended contro versialists in pay, much less that any such notion had any share in influencing my decision.
“ But, Traiving further reference to the several complaints which I investigated, and assuming that all of them were as satisfactorily answered as that one (^iL-hich, ] tow ever, is leijoiul irhat I am prepared to admit), still, the main consideration that influenced me was, the absence of all proof of any positive (jood results. It was all hopes for an uncertain future ; while, for the present, there was the uncompensated evil of much acri monious feeling, excluding (as the curates and several of the inhabitants testified) those quieter approaches of good which had formerly existed.
“ The parochial clergy, to whom Avas committed the spiritual charge of the district, and who are solemnly bound to act therein according to the best of their own judgment, and whom 1 have no reason to suspect of want of anxiety for its Christian welfare, thought that the burden of proof lay on the managers of the Mission to show cause for continuing the experiment in that locality. I did not understand them to give any opinion as to the working of the Mission in other places. It is conceivable that a plan which succeeds ill in some places, may work well in others that are differently circumstanced. But they had in view the district which was under their own eyes, and which was committed to their charge. And in that they (fairly, I think) called for proof of some good results. ‘ Lo these three years I come seeking fruit on this tree and find none : cut it down.’
“ If Dr. West had thought that both his present curates (as well as his late curate, Mr. Webster) were in error on this point, the next step
408 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
would naturally have been, to replace them by others. For it would manifestly have been unwise and hurtful to have two independent agencies going on in the same district without co-operation or mutual confidence. But as he did not think (nor did I) that there was any reason to think their disapprobation*was groundless, his only course wras to request the suspension of the Mission in that locality.
u We may, perhaps — both he and I and the curates — have acted on an error of judgment. But even if it were so, we ought not to be thereupon judged hostile to Protestantism. Xor, again, should anyone assume as indubitable that we must have erred in judgment because we differ from him on a question of expediency, not as to the end to be aimed at, but as to the means to be employed. For this would be to claim an infallibility beyond what the Pope pretends to.
“ If my decision was an erroneous one, it was at least (as you know) not a hasty one. And this is more that can be said for those (and some such there are) who, without having heard anything but an i\r>>arh< statement — and that (as I happen to know) a garbled and incorrect one — presume to pass severe censures on the Archdeacon and me.
“ I have ascertained that some reports are circulated by persons pro fessedly friends to your Mission Avhich are likely in the end to do more damage than any devices of opponents. For falsehoods, though appa rently serving a present purpose, are sooner or later detected, and ihen they do damage not only to the authors of the calumny, but also some times to the cause they advocate.
“It is reported, I find, that Dr. West concealed from me a letter from Mr. Fade (while I was in England) which would have caused my decision to be opposite to what it was. This calumny is one which would have been worthy of the father of lies himself, except that it is so silly and (du/nsi/ a fabrication. For as I had all along determined (as you know) to examine the parties oral!}- face to face, Dr. West could, not, if he had wished it, have kept me in the dark on any point.
“The truth is, that he did transmit to me the whole .substance of Air. Eade’s letter, keeping the letter only as a memorandum for his interview with Mr. Fade previous to the oral examination before myself which had been already resolved on. So that those who give credit to such a story as I have alluded to, show great simplicity — I mean simplicity of head.
“ But no honest man who knows anything of Dr. West would ever suspect him of anything dishonourable, even when there is (as in this case there was not) some object to be gained by it. Those of an opposite character naturally suspect all men of being as unscrupulous as them selves.
“ Some there are, I find, who profess to feel much esteem and veneration for me, only they lament my being in bad hands. I am a mere puppet, it seems, acting just as my evil counsellors pull the strings. This is just the manifesto of most rebels. They honour their king, and only rise in
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 409
arms to drive away his evil counsellors. But I know how to value the professed esteem of such men. A little boy, indeed, may be on the whole a promising child, though he may have been seduced and bullied into something wrong by some naughty seniors ; but a man of my age and in my station who should sutFer himself to be misled by weak or wicked advisers, would be clearly good for nothing. And such, therefore, must be the opinion those persons really have of me.
“ J have mentioned as a specimen one out of many false reports that are circulated. If you should have it in your power in any degree to check them, you will so far be lessening a great danger both to your Mission in particular and to the Protestant cause. For nothing could give a greater triumph to our opponents than to be able to point to persons professing to propagate the Gospel tnit/ts, and yet setting the example of disregarding the ninth commandment even in their dealings with fellow-Protestants.
“ Before 1 conclude this tedious letter. L will mention that Mr. ,
of , a most zealous anti-Papist, has sent me a MS. which I think he
is proposing to print, suggesting some modifications (from his own expe rience) of the Mission system. Some of his suggestions appear to me worth considering. And I have no doubt he would allow me, if vou wished it, to forward the MS. to you.
“ Believe me, dear sir, yours faithfully,
(Signed),
“ RICHARD DUBLIN.
UP.S. — I shall allow Archdeacon West to take a copy of this letter, which he may show to any inquirers who wish to know the truth, and thus save himself the trouble of repeated oral explanations.”
Notwithstanding the censure passed upon the missions, the following certificate respecting the Dublin branch was signed by the following Dublin clergy: — Archdeacon Wolsley, the Key. Dr. Stanford, the Rev. Dr. Sidney Smith, and the “Rev. Messrs. Day, Griffin, Whately, Hare, Marable, Plunket, Halahan, Thistleton, Askiu, Wiiidle, and Lynch : —
u We, the undersigned, having knowledge of the principles and working of this special mission for visiting from house to house throughout Dublin, by the instrumentality of well-trained and experienced missionary agents ; and being earnestly desirous to strengthen and increase its operations in this city, hereby heartily commend it to the consideration and support of our congregations and friends, in order that they may give it such encouragement and help as will be commensurate with the extent and importance of this metropolis, and the Christian zeal of our Protestant population.”
410 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
The results of the correspondence and inquiries seemed so satisfactory to the committee of the society that they pub lished the whole of the documents in a pamphlet/’1’
Last summer the present Archbishop of Dublin was in duced to pay a visit to Coniiemara, in order that he might be enabled to judge for himself as to the reality of the missionary work, and the truth of the reports concerning it. His Grace was so well pleased with what lie saw and heard that he sent a letter to the jTi-mes, bearing strong testimony in favour of the missions, and describing the congregations and the schools. Soon after the appearance of his letter, the priests of the several parishes in which the missionaries operate published positive contradictions of his statements, and asserted that lie had been imposed upon, repeating the old story, that the people com the congregations and the
children in the schools had been, brought from a distance for the occasion. These allegations were emphatically denied by the Rev. Hyacinth D’Arcy, incumbent of Clifden, and a magistrate of the county, who is the chief superintendent
1
of the missions, and receives a portion of Ids income from tlie society. He is a gentleman of great respectability, having been the former proprietor of Clifden. And no one would think of accusing him of stating what lie did not believe to be true. Yet, it must be confessed, that the con flict of testimony is very perplexing.
There was, however, a curious trial, bearing upon the subject, in the Court of Common Pleas, which commenced on the 17th of December, 1866, before Chief Justice Moriahan and a special jury. It was an action brought by Robert Stevenson, a schoolmaster, against the Rev. Roderick Ryder, of Clifden. The plaintiff claimed £500 damages for alleged
o
slander. The following were the circumstances that led to the trial. In consequence of the controversy that arose after the publication of the Archbishop’s letter in the Times, the proprietor of the Dnbliu Evening J^W, a Roman Catholic journal, sent a gentleman named O’Farrell as a
* “The Irish Church Missions and the Rev. George Webster,” &c. Dublin, 1864.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 411
••»
special commissioner, to investigate the facts on the spot. Mr. O’Farrell visited the school conducted by Mr. Stevenson, and questioned him about the parentage and religion of the children, and then published his answers in the D all in Evening Post. It was stated that the Rev. Messrs. D’Arcy and Ryder called the schoolmaster to account for having given such information, arid that from this sprung an animus against him, issuing in an altercation between him and Mr. Ryder about the price of a load of turf. In this altercation the plaintiff denied in the presence of Mr. D’Arcy and others having ever received payment of the ten shillings in dispute, whereupon the defendant, as alleged, spoke and published the following words: — “Oh, yes, I paid you, Mr. Stevenson; I paid you, and that is all I know. You are a liar, and an infernal liar.” The plaintiff was ultimately dismissed from the service of the society, and lie now sought to recover damages for the loss he sustained in consequence of the words alleged to have been spoken by the defendant.
Counsel handed in the following extract from Archbishop Trench’s letter to the Tin tan : — “Two days later the Bishop of Tuam consecrated another new church at Errismore, some seven, or eight miles to the south of Clifden. The total church population of this district is 282. Of these 76 are original Protestants and 200 converts, of these latter J)C being scholars under fifteen years of age, but attending church ; the re mainder adults. There were present at the consecration service 415 persons, of whom 215 (including 40 original Protestants, 1G4 converts, and 11 Roman Catholics) were inhabitants of the district. There remained more than 70 to partake of the holy communion.”
He also put in the following, from the letter of the Evening Post commissioner: — “I have been assured by respectable .persons who were in the vicinity of the church on the day referred to, that there were not 200 persons present, including the school children. Now as to the ‘96 scholars,’ I made it my business to visit the mission school of Errismore, raid I found only 31 children, of both sexes, present, and of that number more than a moiety appeared to me to be under the
412 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
age of four years. The school is certainly capable of con taining more than 96 scholars, but there were not within GO of that number present at half-past one o’clock on yesterday (Tuesday), and I have been informed that of those attending 5 are the children of the ‘ reader,’ -1 of the schoolmaster, and 6 the children of a pensioner from Cork, all Protestants ; making a total of 15. I do not vouch for this of my own knowledge, but I have had it from good authority. I had some conversation with the schoolmaster, who appeared to me to be a respectable man, and he assured me that he did not believe there was one child of Catholic parents amongst the 31 present in the school; and this, be it observed, is one of the strongholds of the Church Mission Society in West Connaught.”
In the course of his examination, Mr. Stevenson, the schoolmaster, swore, that probably only three or four of his pupils in the school in question were in fact the children of Catholic parents. With respect to his dismissal, his counsel, Mr. M’Laughlin, read the following letter : —
“The Rectory, Clifden, Co. Galway, u oth September.
“ SIR, — I enclose ten shillings, which I hope may save you the (rouble you fear, or lose your friendship. However, I will forward your note to Air. Cory, that he may see what a friend he has, and how well all his kindness lias been appreciated.— Yours, Sir,
lt HYACINTH DAHCY.”
u Mr. James Darcy will cash the check for you at any moment.”
The jury gave the plaintiff a. farthing damages.
The late bishop, Lord Pluriket, and some of his clergy, were for years involved in bitter controversy and litigation with the priests of the parishes in which his property was situated, in connexion with the schools and other missionary operations, and there were some cases of gross outrage, and even the shedding of blood. But happily, towards the close of his lordship’s life, more amicable relations grew up be tween him and the Roman Catholic people around him. and it was observed that some of the most violent of his former clerical opponents showed their respect for his memory by attending his funeral,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 413
One of the principal agencies employed for the extension of the Church in West Connanght is the West Connaught Church Endowment Society. In January, 1865, the bishop issued an appeal from his palace at Tuam, in which he said :
“ The Church revenues of the district, which have always been miserably disproportioncd to the extent of the parishes from which they are derived, have been subdivided to the uttermost, in the hope of meeting the increased demand for pastoral supervision, but in vain ; and the result is, that there are now in West Connanght a large number of im portant districts, each requiring the care of a separate clergyman, which are dependent for pastoral superintendence solely upon the precarious supply of annual contributions.
“ In the year 1859, a society, entitled the West Connaught Church Endowment Society, was formed, under the patron age of the late Lord Primato of all Ireland, the object of which was to convert these new fields of labour into separate parochial districts (or what in England are called ‘ new parishes’), and to provide each district with such an endow ment as might ensure to it the permanent services of a resident minister.
“The Bishop of Tuam is happy to say that, since the for mation of that society, live of the most important districts of West Connaught (Moyrus, Sellerna, Derrygimla, Castle- kerke, and Bally croy) have been provided through its means with an endowment of £75 per annum each.
“ In the case of Moyrus and Sellerna, this endowment has been augmented by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland up to £100 per annum, and there is reason to expect a similar augmentation from the Commissioners, in the case of the remaining districts which this society still proposes to endow.
“ The next district whose endowment is contemplated by this society is that of Ballyconree. The sum required for this endowment is £2,500 ; and as more than £1,000 has been already collected for this purpose by the society, it is hoped that, before long, the full amount will have been made up. It is a striking proof of the value of this society,
414 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
that, in consequence of the endowment provided by it for Derrygimla and Castlekerke, the Ecclesiastical Commis sioners for Ireland have made grants for building churches in these districts — a step which they would not have other wise felt themselves justified in taking.
“The Bishop of Tuam is happy’ to state, that wherever the claims of this society have been made known, they have enlisted the warm sympathy of all who unite in loving our Church and desiring Us extension. The late Lord Primate of Ireland .showed his interest in the work by the munifi cent donation of £800, and the present Primate of Ireland, in addition to a liberal donation of his own, has given to the society £500 from a Church trust-fund of which he has the disposal. The late Archbishop of Canterbury not only signified his approval, but also subscribed to the funds of tin1 society. The ivivseiit Archbishop is a contributor of 110 less than £100. The Archbishop of Dublin, and the Bishops of i Winchester, KiLuore, Rochester, Winchester, Meath, Deny, Oxford, and Ripon, have all contributed to this society ; and among the names of its lay-supporters appears that of our present Premier.’’
Lord Plunket has been succeeded by another member of a noble family, the Hon. and Rev. Charles Broderick Bernard, D.D., brother of the Earl of Bandon. He was consecrated at Armagh, on Sunday, loth January, 1807, by the Lord Primate, assisted by the Bishop of Cork and the Bishop of Kilmore. The consecration sermon was preached by the Hon. and Rev. W. C. Plunket, Chaplain to the late Bishop. After all the prayers and forms of the solemnity the act of consecration took place as follows : — His Grace and the bishops, after the conclusion of prayer, placed their hands upon, the head of the elected bishop, who knelt before them, and his Grace said — “ Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. And remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is given thee by this imposition of our hands, for God hath
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 415
not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and soberness.” Then the Archbishop delivered the Bible to the new bishop amid the breathless silence of the congregation, and closed this singularly solemn part of the ceremony by exhorting him in the prescribed words.
On the Friday following Dr. Bernard was enthroned as Bishop of Tuam, Achonry, and Killala, The following members of his family Avere present, with many of the gentry of the neighbourhood : — The Earl of Bandon and Countess of Biindoii, Mrs. Bernard, Lord Bernard, Mr. Percy Bernard, Mr. W. B. Bernard. Having been formally and warmly welcomed by Archdeacon Townsend, the Rev. Dr. Trench, the Rev. C. If. Seymour, Vicar and Provost of Tuam, and Mr. Denis Kerwin, D.L., in the name of the clergy and laity, his lordship spoke as follows : — “ I feel greatly obliged to you for your kind expressions and most kind welcome to me. I won’t deny to you that coming into such a diocese, where such a work has been carried 011, causes me great fear and trembling. In fact, the united diocese over which I have now been called to exercise some supervision is one which is looked to, not only throughout Ireland, but throughout the United Kingdom, as the bright spot in the Church of Ireland. And, of course, in proportion to its magnitude, and in proportion to the zeal and energy, and faithfulness with which the late Bishop carried 011 the work, in such proportion must my difficulties increase. But I can only assure you that I bring to the work that is now before me the most earnest desire to uphold in every way the different details which have been carried on throughout your diocese. It is very strengthening to feel that, next to the strength which I humbly and earnestly look for from on high, I have such a body of clergy as there is in this united diocese. I don’t hesitate to say that, though I have come from a place which is remarkable for the faithfulness of its clergy, still I believe there is no diocese in the United Kingdom where there are so many earnest and faithful men ; and these will support me, not only by their work, but by their prayers, and I shall look to them especially, that they will be continually supplicating for me at God’s throne of
416 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
grace for grace and strength, without which I cannot hope to do a single act for His glory. Dr. Trench and the Arch deacon have both kindly spoken of me in connexion with the Church Education Society. I am always bold to speak in that cause, which I believe to be essential to the very existence of Protestantism. I have no hesitation in saying that if we give up essentially, unmistakably Protestant schools, that we shall soon give up Protestantism altogether; and I always wish to speak boldly and clearly upon this point. I thank God that lie lias preserved me from ever com promising myself, and 1 pray that he will keep me steadfast and immovable in this great and glorious work. The Avork of missions, which is so special and prominent a feature in this diocese, is one which has occupied the whole of my ministerial life. Whether under the Irish Society, or the Irish Church Mission Society — for I have worked for both — I have been a working man. And the details of that work, which, of course, I shall not trouble you with, have been great encouragement to me, and have made me familiar
O O
with what I shall enter upon here. And I can only assure- yon, my dear brethren, of the delight which I feel that I shall have the sympathy of my clergy, and that they shall have mine ; that in all their arduous work I hope to take a part, and whether in what calls for labour or sympathy, they shall never find me wanting. I confess I feel our meeting together to-day a great privilege. I hope that I shall be familiarly acquainted with every one here ; but I feel the great kindness and honour you have done me in coming in such inclement weather, and at most serious inconvenience to yourselves, to give me this kind and cordial welcome. I accept it in the spirit of love and kindness ; and I look forward to our co-operating together with the greatest comfort, so that God’s Word ‘ may have free course and be glorified.’ I do sincerely thank you, and hope that you will pardon the few imperfect remarks which I have been able to make on an occasion which makes me feel very much indeed/’
Lord Bandon also addressed the assembly, and in the course of his speech said : — “ I agree with the expression of
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 417
my brother that the maintenance of parochial schools and Scriptural education is essential to the welfare, and, under God, to the very existence of our United Church. It has often been my duty to take part in the House of Commons in questions relating to the Church. It is nineteen years since I first spoke in favour of it, and every year’s experience since then has only convinced me that there is no real Church if we do not, like the vestal virgin, retain the undying flame of truth in our bosom. There is no doubt there may be danger if her clergy, as in England, adopt semi-Romish practices. But this is not the place to dilate upon that matter. It is my duty only to thank you. I hope that all those whom I have met here to-day will be greater friends at a future time. It gives me most sincere pleasure to see you all in my brother’s house, because I feel that a Christian bishop and his clergy ought to unite under his roof. If the Church is to prosper, it is by the common union of all bodies, and the cordial and affectionate welcome given by the bishop to his clergy. I am delighted at the connexion which I now form with the West of Ireland, and I trust that we may all pull together in the maintenance of Protestant principles. Allusion has been made to the loss of the late bishop. I had the pleasure of knowing him personally, and valuing his great exertion ; and I feel sure that my brother will cordially support the missionary exertion which he made in this place. For me it is perhaps scarcely proper to say so ; but I feel that the laity is a part of the Church, and that our essential duty is to be a missionary Church. - Our duties are not to be confined to our own communion, but will never cease so long as there is a Roman Catholic unconverted to the truth.”
The Very Rev. Lord Mountmorres, Dean of Tuam, has published the following remarkable letter in connexion with this appointment : —
“TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY EXPRESS.
“ SIR, — Having just seen in your paper of the 8th a letter signed “ Lex Ecclesise,” in which, under an assumed title, the writer charges me with propagating the inaccuracy I noticed, and questions me who was to grant
2 E
418 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
licences if no administrator was elected, and why was the usual course departed from, and, though not last, who were the powers over me, I hasten to refer him to page 111 of Rogers’ Ecclesiastical Law, where he will find it laid down here in England the archbishop is guardian of the spiritualities of any see within his province. And now, having said so much, which answers the question put to me. I will tell him that when I came to this deanery I found things in a sad way. I inquired from the then registrar, and I could only find that all the papers relating to the dean and chapter had been burned, even the silver seal melted away, and I could not find that a chapter ever was held. Why this was so I can only surmise that the presence of records might prove the non-registry of leases, which would be destroyed thereby.
MOUNTMORKES.
On these proceedings at Tuam the London Examiner makes the following rather cynical comments : — “ The well trained and highly paid actors in that mystery of mysteries, the mi-Irish Church in Ireland, are resolved to play out the farce to the last. The play is a State Play performed by command for the entertainment of a select audience, from the yonnger members of which the chief actors are taken. Believe the first words of each as he comes on the stage, and ‘ he had rather not be a bishop.’ The Hon. and Reverend Broderick Bernard, just named by Lord Derby Protestant diocesan of the Catholic diocese of Tuam, improves the occasion by translating into conversational language the classical nolo episcopari. As if he were tearing himself from a weeping flock to go on a victim mission to some cannibal land, the Hon. Rector of Kilbro<mii declares himself
£3
almost choked with emotion at the sight of some of the neighbouring squires who had come ‘in the snow’ with a candelabrum to light him on his desolate way to the spiritual peerage of Tuam, and a poor £4,000 a year ! This is inim itable in its way. A younger son of one of the great Planter families of Munster, who in all their generations have lived, politically, sword in hand amidst a subject race, having to make choice of a calling, chooses for his vocation the ministry of the Act of Parliament Church. Unlike a real Church, there are for the most part no duties to be performed in it comparatively worthy of the name, for in the most part it
* INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 419
is a sheepfold without sheep, where the shepherd has nothing to do, and where, having no flock of his own, the law shears for him his neighbours, and gives him the price of his wool. Just the right sort of calling this for a younger brother of a Tory earl. The eldest born has the estate, so the second must either go into the Guards or sit for the family borough, with its 220 retainer constituents, or take Holy Orders. The Honorable and Reverend Broderick Bernard, being the grandson of an archbishop, and representing, as his name denotes, the confluent claims of two noble houses to be pro vided for at the public charge, chooses the last alternative, and for his appointed time plays the subordinate part of priest-in-waiting. Promotion was quicker formerly, before Lord Derby in a Whiggish freak threw ten anti-Irish mitres into the melting pot of Reform. But to do him justice, he has never missed an opportunity of compensating the great families, whose hereditary means of comfort and luxury he lessened thereby, for the evil he so inconsistently did them. When he was in office before, the brother of Lord Dunsandle was raised to the see of Cashel, and now having the intensely anti-Protestant see of Tuam to fill up, he has given it to one of the intensely anti-Catholic house of Bandon.
“ It may be said, indeed, that in this our present Premier differs in no way from those who have gone before him, and that between Tory and Whig distribution of episcopal prize- money in the conquered realm the difference is but in name. Lord Palmerston made the cousin of the Marquis of Water- ford Primate, with an annual stipend of £12,000, not long a^o • and since then Lord Ashtown’s brother has been made
O ‘
Metropolitan, of Dublin, with a salary of £10,000 a year. Lord Normanby, while he was Viceroy, conferred a bishopric on Lord Riversdale; the late Bishop of Tuam was Lord Plunket ; and the present Bishop of Down, a near relative of the Earl of Ranfurly, owes his elevation to Lord Clarendon. This only shows incontrovertibly what the Anglican Estab lishment in Ireland is for. Rifled at first by brutal force, such as Mr. Froude, in his last volume of Elizabeth’s reign, lacks words to characterize as it deserves, Church property
2E2
420 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
in Ireland has been used, under all circumstances and by all administrations, as the wages of corruption. There it is ; what else is to be done with it ? The original purpose for which it was set apart has been made contraband by law. For no share in the Catholic gifts and Catholic donations of Catholic times must any Catholic in a Catholic country apply. Sometimes we see on the walls a placard with the heading, ‘ Robbery and Reward,’ and those who read are bidden to seek out those who hold or who hide the ravished spoil, and encouraged to help in the discovery by a promise of part of the prey. But in this case there is no conceal ment, and the derivative title by ancestry of having had a share in the storm and sack of the Irish Church is treated as the best recommendation to the choicest bits in the appropriation of the plunder. There is joy indeed among the garrison class whenever such conspicuous claims are publicly recognised. For
u ‘ Doesn’t it seem like the fulfilling of prophecies,
When all the best families are put into all the best offices?’“
“ An Irish Peer” has published a pamphlet, in the form of a letter, to the Archbishop of Dublin, on “ Proselytism,”* which deserves the most serious attention, it is written in such a friendly, calm, and judicious spirit. He is intimately acquainted with the subject, and I believe his views to be thoroughly correct, and his inferences perfectly just. If this be so it must be admitted that Lord Derby has made an unfortunate appointment in placing in the heart of Con- naught a divine, who brings with him from Bandon, across the Shannon, all the associations of Protestant ascendancy, and the avowed purpose of prosecuting the work of proselyt- ism, that is, of carrying on a religious war against the mass of the people, the comrnander-in-chief being bishop of a Church established by law and splendidly endowed, but numbering only one in thirty-three of the population, as appears from the subjoined table which I have constructed from the Parliamentary papers : —
* Dublin: Hodges and Smith, 1865.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. TABLE.
421
t
Propor
Diocese.
3. of Benefi<
Net Income.
Ave rage for each Incum bent.
Cost per Head of Church Population.
Total Popula tion.
Estab lished Church Popula tion.
tion of Church Members to entire Popula
fc
tion.
£
£
£ s. d.
Per cent.
Tuam, . . .
49
10,690
218
137
312,961
9,041
3
Killala, . . .
15
3,689
245
0 15 6
87,075
4,724
5
Achonry, . .
12
3,032
252
0 18 0
108,870
3,392
3
Total for united
diocese, .
7G
17,411
229
1 0 3
508,906
17,157
H
Dean Atkins, or Dean Alexander, would have made a far more suitable bishop for Tuam, if only to break the monotony of aristocratic appointments made in the spirit of an old rfyime, fraught with so much social injustice, and held accountable for so much national calamity. Bishop Bernard, with all the facts and statistics before him, called Tuam the bright spot of the Church Establishment, and acquiesced in the statement of his brother, Lord Bandon, that the war against Romanism should not cease. But even now he and
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other influential friends of the Establishment would do well to reflect upon the words of “ An Irish Peer,” who is a Protestant, and has been a subscriber to those societies which aim at the conversion of the Irish Roman Catholics, and who still does full justice to the motives of those who are engaged in the work of proselytism. He says : — “ The machinery of proselytism set in motion in Ireland during the last thirty or forty years, by means of English and Irish societies, has been of the most extensive as well as expensive kind. Reports of the various religious societies inform us of the amount subscribed, the number of agents, lay and clerical, employed ; and the result, or want of any result, has been annually proclaimed from the platform. Need I quote the annual reports that now lie before me, to show that if liberal subscriptions could have availed, they were not wanting ? An organization employing several hundred agents, extend-
422 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
ing throughout Ireland, aided by local committees, and in many cases by powerful local influence, might be expected to make many converts in so poor a country. The landlords in an immense majority are Protestants, and even if indif ferent to religious motives, they know that their material interests would gain by the conversion of the poor Roman Catholics. Every Protestant knows, or at least believes, that the disaffection, to Government and ill-feeling towards the higher classes prevalent among the poor, is in part due to miscalled religious teaching.
“ But what results have we obtained in the shape of con versions ? How many converts does the Hibernian Society report for the last year ? How many does the Irish Church Missionary Society ?
“Were I to analyse these reports, as I had intended, enumerating, on the one hand, actual conversions claimed, and, on the other hand, giving the subscriptions received; or were I to contrast positive results achieved with those pro mised or expected, said to be contingent upon fresh exertions, or to be prevented by adverse circumstances or influences, the statement would appear like satirical criticism. I would rather, therefore, refer to these reports themselves, and to the speeches of clergy or laymen annually made at the Dublin meetings, leaving to the impartial inquirer to decide whether, on the evidence of its most zealous friends, the cause of proselytism in Ireland has been successful.
“That there are still a few worthy persons who, after years of disappointment, maintain their hopes and reiterate assur ances, which the experience of nearly forty years has con tradicted, is quite true. But those who remember the lan guage held years ago, when a few conversions did look like a real beginning, or at later periods when, in default of any actual results, the usual phrase applied to Roman Catholics was, that ‘ there is a spirit of inquiry among them,’ must smile at the repetition of such language in the present day !
“ The man must be blind indeed to the signs of the times, blind to the external objects visible to all who have eyes, blind to what passes in our streets and fields, and equally
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 423
blind to the lessons of a press entirely devoted to the priests, who thinks that their influence is waning !
“If Koman Catholic churches and cathedrals, emulating those of the Continent in costly architecture — if convents, monasteries, colleges, all built within the last twenty years, be any evidence of declining zeal, then Romanism may be declining. Nor need we confine ourselves to these indirect but significant proofs of zeal in a poor country ; for no one resident in Ireland can be ignorant of the greatly increased influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood over their nocks. The chapels are everywhere better attended upon holidays, and the lower orders, at all events, are far more strict in their confessions, fists, and other religious observances, than they used to be. Would that our poor Protestants in their own creed had emulated them !
“ Let us honesty admit it, too — the moral conduct of the poor Roman Catholics has much improved of late years. The old type of landlord-murder, which has been well de scribed as ‘ parochial murders,’ because the whole parish was sometimes privy to them, has become obsolete, and with it the darkest stain on the character of the poor Roman Catholic Irish has been removed; other crimes have notably decreased, as proved by the criminal statistics, and the proud boast of Irish womanhood, has been more than ever justified. If we see some grounds to regret the influence of the priesthood, justice and truth require us to acknowledge, that on these points at least it has been beneficial. It is really time that we should look at the facts of the case, and dismiss any illusions begotten by religious zeal.
“ I am far from attributing intentional misinterpretation to the compilers of society reports, read at the May meet ings, or to the speakers — better men than myself — who address them ; but I do say, that the real truth of the case is not to be gathered from these reports and speeches ; and certainly 110 good cause can, or ought to be advanced except by truth.
“ The zealous and excellent men who devote themselves to the cause of converting the Roman Catholics seem to me
424 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
to maintain the opinions with which they commenced their labours some thirty or forty years ago, and to ignore the vast changes which (partly on account of those very labours) have come over the whole Roman Catholic body in Ireland. An Irish layman who can look back thirty or forty years, will have no difficulty in recognising that the antagonism between the two creeds is greatly increased, and that the Roman Catholics have received a stronger and more exclu sive organization under the priesthood.
“Where free intercourse, and even fellowship, existed between the two creeds before, there is coldness and repul sion now. The priests, 011 their side, have not been idle during the attacks upon their religion, and by enlisting all the antipathies of race, creed, and tradition against the Protestants, they have more than repulsed the assault. Where there was indifference before, they have aroused a hatred, which would in itself suffice to baffle the well-meant efforts of proselytism, and they have endeared Romanism to their nocks, not less as antagonistic to the Saxon creed than as connected with the history of the Celt.
“This policy, if not quite in the spirit of the Gospel, was still as natural as it was skilful. But the Roman Catholic priesthood adopted another policy entirely unobjectionable and well worthy of imitation. They seemed to have felt that the greatest danger to their creed would arise from any moral inferiority in its votaries, when compared to Protest ants. From controversy, oral or written, they could easily protect their flocks by the simple expedient of forbidding it. But the silent argument of a better example and a more con sistent life might have done for Protestantism more than the whole machinery hitherto brought into play.
“To meet this peril the Irish priests set about a moral reformation which, at least in rural parishes, has very com pletely succeeded. The gatherings and merry-meetings which led to drunkenness and immorality were discouraged. The idleness — parent of vice — in which the holidays of the Church used to be passed, has been changed into close at tendance at chapel ; and from this change a visible advance
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 425
in the orderly and decorous habits of the people has resulted. Between the ragged and noisy congregations which thronged the chapels of yore, and the decently clad, quiet congre gations (with their handsome prayer-books — a new feature) in the present day, the difference is immense. And it is but fair to the poor Roman Catholics to say, that their im proved appearance and outward demeanour only correspond to their advance in moral conduct. Let us in the interest of truth, if not of controversy, do justice to the well-ordered parishes, and really well-conducted population of Avhich there are many examples. I could point to Roman Cath olic parishes which present the ideal type of what a rural parish should be, where the mutual relations of the priests and people are all that we desire for our own Church, and where the moral state of the poor might compare favourably with the best of our Protestant parishes.
“There are zealous Protestants who can discover no merit among the professors of an erroneous creed, and who will consider the good conduct of Roman Catholics a spurious morality. I do not agree with them ; but that is beside the question ; for my aim has only been to show that against all the efforts of proselytism, the priests, better tacticians than their opponents, have only increased their influence and strengthened their position. In the matter of relative morality, they have cut the ground from under our feet, and deprived us of the best argument in our mouths by showing that the assumed superiority of Protestants might be denied.”
According to the arrangements of the Roman Catholic Church, which scrupulously observes the old ecclesiastical landmarks, the province of Tuam consists of seven sees — Tuam, Clorifert, Acliomy, Elphin, Kilmacduagh and Kil- fenora, Killala, and Galway. Archbishop MacHale, whose name has been almost constantly before the Irish public for nearly half a century, is the Metropolitan. He is a Con- naught man, having been born at Tubbernaveen, county Mayo, in 1791 ; he is, therefore, seventy-six years old. He distinguished himself by his learning and abilities at a very early age, having been appointed Professor of Dogmatic
426 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Theology in the College of Maynooth when he was only about twenty-three years old. In 1825 he was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Killala, with right of succession, and consecrated with the title of Bishop of Maronia, in partibus. He was then widely known as the author of a series of letters on Bible Societies, the Established Church, and Catholic grievances, under the signature of “ Hierophilus” A second series of the same kind was published later under his own name. He is also the author of a work on the “ Evidences and Doctrines of the Catholic Church.” In 1834 he succeeded Dr. Kelly as Archbishop of Tuam, and in that position he has continued ever since to be a tower of strength to the Roman Catholic cause, being by far the most powerful champion of that cause in the hierarchy after the death of Dr. Doyle. O’Connell used to call him the Lion of Tuam. He has always been intensely national in his sentiments, and indefatigable in his exertions to check the advance of Protestantism. He was some years ago continually writing letters in the newspapers to the Prime Minister for the time being, and other public men;in which lie ostentatiously showed his contempt for the Ecclesiastical Titles Act by adopting the signature, “ John, Archbishop of Tuam.” Perhaps he could not have given better proof of his ardent nationality than he did by translating Moore’s Melodies and six books of the Iliad into Irish verse. He always affected a lofty scorn of the prelates of the Established Church, as mere State functionaries thrust into the see to trouble the repose of his flock. There is something wonderful in. the hierarchial system of Home, which can thus raise the son of a peasant to a status, and animate him by a spirit that enable him to maintain such a bearing towards rivals of aristocratic blood, princely revenues, and high social prestige, especially when he is dependent for his support upon the voluntary contri butions of a poor and degraded people.
There are in the diocese of Tuam 40 parish priests, 51 administrators and curates, with a few regulars — total, 101 priests, who officiate in 115 churches and chapels. There are besides 13 Franciscan monasteries, six convents, one college,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 427
and two Christian Brothers’ establishments. The editor of the “Irish Catholic Directory” observes that “this is the only diocese in Ireland in which none of the schools conducted by the religious orders are under State control, or derive public grants for their support. The eleven Franciscan schools, with an aggregate number on the roll of about 5,000 ; the two Christian Brothers’ schools, Tuam and Westport, with their 1,400 ; and the six Convent schools, with their 3,600 pupils, or an aggregate of 10,900 children, are supported solely by the religious orders themselves, assisted by the voluntary contributions of the people of the diocese. The organized scheme of pecuniary proselytising, supported by immense aid from England and Ireland, and backed by the persistent influence of many of the loading landed proprietors, has its head-quarters in this diocese ; but notwithstanding the poverty of the people, and, as a con sequence, of the clergy, and the loss which abstinence from State grants inflicts on the schools of the religious commu nities, such is the deep attachment of the people to their faith, and such the zeal and activity of the clergy, inspired by their venerated Archbishop, that no sensible effect has ever been produced on the population by all these adverse agencies, the diocese of Tuam containing in. 1861, 966 Catholics in every 1 ,000 of the population, and ranking next to Dublin in the aggregate number of Catholics, numbering 302,367 souls. The parochial schools, under lay teachers, are, considering the circumstances of the country, fair in number, and tolerably efficient.”
The diocese of Clonfert has — Bishop, 1 ; parish priests and administrators, 23; curates, 11; regulars, 9 ; churches, 45 — of regulars, 3 ; of nuns, 3 ; convents of regulars, 3 ; nun neries, 3. Achonry — Bishop, 1 ; parish priests, 1 7 ; curates, 16 ; others, 4 ; chapels and churches, 37 ; convents, 2. Elphin — Bishop,! ; parish priests, 38 ; curates, 51 ; regulars, 5 ; monasteries, 2 ; chapels, 84 ; convents, 3 ; nunneries, 4 ; college, 1 ; seminary, 1.
In connexion with this diocese the editor of the “ Catholic Directory “ observes — “ There are large convent schools in
428 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Roscommon, Athlone, and Sligo, attended by 2,172 girls ; and the Marist Fathers conduct a numerously attended school in Sligo. The supply of parochial schools, under lay teachers, is numerous and increasing. Model schools have been erected and opened in Sligo in defiance of the protest of the Bishop and of the adverse decision of all the prelates of the province assembled in synod ; but no Catholic pupil enters their unhallowed walls, and, supported at an immense expense from the public taxes, there they stand a monument of British aggression upon Catholic rights and also of Catholic fidelity to the voice of their pastors.” Notwithstanding this denunciation, the visiter will find the Sligo Mode] School one of the best conducted institutions in the United Kingdom, every person connected with it being evidently animated by the spirit of Christian kindness arid charity, and the well-placed schools presenting real models of order, propriety, and efficiency.
In the united diocese of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora there are — Bishop, 1; parish priests, 15; administrators, 4; curates, 10 ; others, 2 ; chapels, 37 ; nunneries, 2 ; Christian Brothers’ establishments, 2. Gal way has — Bishop, 1 ; parish priests, 13; curates, 7; others, 20; churches, 26; convents, 5 ; nunneries, 5 ; college, 1.
It is said that the convent schools there are among the best in Ireland. They have the following numbers of pupils on their rolls :— Rahoon, 599 ; Newtown-Srnith, 999 ; St. Nicholas, 323; Oughterard, 258; Oranmore, 260— Total, 2,439. These, with the monks’ boys, make a total of 3,412 pupils under instruction in the primary schools conducted by religious orders. Killala has: — Bishop, 1 ; parish priests, 20; curates, 17; others, 4; chapels, 40; diocesan seminary, 1; nunnery, 1.
The following is a summary of the archdiocese, showing what the voluntary system has done in the province of Connaught in the erection of buildings, in the work of edu cation, and in the maintenance of priests, monks, and nuns : —Bishops, 7; parish priests, 168; administrators and curates, including chaplains and professors, 181 ; regular clergy, 33 ;
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 429
churches and chapels, 387 ; houses of religious orders, or communities of priests, 11; of men, 19; of women, 24.
It would be difficult to estimate the value of the buildings of various kinds — churches, chapels, convents, and schools, which have been erected in Connaught by the Homan Cath olics during the last forty years. Many of them, no doubt, were chiefly constructed, by the free labour of the people, with materials on the spot. But a rough estimate may be formed from the statistics which I have given of the dioceses of Dublin, Ferns, and Armagh.
430 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES,
CHAPTER XXI.
OF the primatial see of Armagh Archdeacon Cotton says — “ There seems to be no reasonable ground for doubting that
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this Church was founded and endued with its primatial dignity and pre-eminence by St. Patrick.” He also remarks that, “ the registry of Armagh presents a splendid contrast to the others. This repository (alone of Ireland) contains a venerable and valuable series of ancient registers of some of
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the earlier prelates, which, happily, have escaped destruction.” In consequence of the disturbed state of the province of Ulster during a great part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, most of the diocesan registers suffered the loss of their ancient records. Armagh was so fortunate as to escape this calamity, so as to be a splendid exception to all the rest of the sees. From these remarks of the venerable chronicler we might expect a complete catalogue of the primates of Armagh from the days of St. Patrick down. But when we turn to this complete repository we find that so far from beginning with St. Patrick, the ancient registers which he
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enumerates do not commence till beyond the middle of the fourteenth century, the first series being from the year 1361 to 1416, and containing the registers of Archbishops Sweet- man, Cotton, and Fleming. The Armagh line ought to be the back-bone of the Irish episcopal succession, but when examined it is found to be nothing of the kind. The most ancient seal of the see extant is that of Primate Dowdall, 1543-58. It was in the possession of the Hon. Horace Walpole at Strawberry-hill. It bears the arms of the see. In the middle, under a canopy, sits a bishop mitred; on one side St. George, and on the other “some other saint, pro bably St. Patrick.”
The “lives” of St. Patrick, of which there are great numbers, are admitted to be full of fables and inaccuracies
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 431
for the most part. After a great deal of winnowing and sifting, the most probable accounts are given by Archbishop Ussher and Sir James Ware. But even in these accounts a considerable quantity of the marvellous has been preserved. We are told that Patrick was probably born in 373 at Kirk- patrick, near the Scottish border, his father being a deacon and his grandfather a priest ; that when sixteen he was taken prisoner and carried into Ireland, where he remained a slave for six years ; that he escaped, and returned to his parents; then travelled over the Continent, spending several years at Rome ; that he was ordained deacon by his uncle, St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, and priest by St. German, Bishop of Auxerre; that at Rome he was consecrated bishop, and got a commission from the Pope to convert the Irish, and in the pursuit of his mission arrived here in the year 432. He is said to have travelled through the country, “founding churches in very many places.” At last, in 445, he arrived at Armagh, where he did much more than found a church. “ He laid out the city, built a church, and assem bled around him a multitude of religious persons.” How a foreign missionary in a heathen country, jealous of its nationality, was thus enabled to create a populous city, as if by magic, does not appear. He seems, however, to have accomplished all these marvels in two years ; for in 447 he crossed over to the Isle of Man, and built a church there. On his return he visited Dublin, where he forthwith converted the king, and laid the foundation of Patrick’s Cathedral. He then hurried off to Munster, visited Cashel, baptized its king, “ and settled the ecclesiastical authorities in the southern parts.” Having employed the next six years in settling the Church of Ireland on a solid foundation, and having ordained bishops and priests through the whole island, according to the patterns which he had seen in other countries, he went to Rome again, where he was received joyfully by the Pope, and sent back to Ireland with increased honours and powers. He at length died in his Abbey of Saul, when he was 120 years old.
He appears to have had, while still alive, several successors
432 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
in the see of Armagh ; but little or nothing is known of his successors for centuries. Some of them bear the double title of abbot and bishop, the cause of which is fully explained in the “ Life of St. Patrick,” by Dr. Todd. Had Archdeacon Cotton read that work, he would, no doubt, have greatly modified his account of the succession in this see, and he would not have ignored the fact that it was for two centuries in the possession, by hereditary descent, of one noble family, and that the bishop so called during that period was merely the en Lploye of the chief, doing the spiritual duties for him by proxy — something in the character of a chaplain. This vast hiatus, almost as wide as the space between the English Revolution and the present time, like a glen between two mountains formed by a convulsion of nature, Archdeacon Cotton passes over as easily as a bird. Not a fe\v of the “ archbishops “ whose names he gives were cut off somehow when they had reigned only a year ; and the most remark able thing recorded of any of them relates to 1272, seven centuries after St. Patrick. Under that }rear the annalists inform us that Nicholas M’Molissa was consecrated, and was of a turbulent disposition, quarreling both with the clergy and the King, and exciting determined opposition to all lay authority. Moreover, he was an inveterate enemy to all such Englishmen as were preferred to bishoprics in this kingdom.” Notwithstanding the bad features of his cha racter, he is said to have been a benefactor of his Church and in reputation for “ eloquence and wisdom.” From this period down we read frequently of persons being raised to this see by the Pope. Fitzralph, Sweetman, Cotton, Fleming, Swayne, Prene, Mey, Foxalls, Connesburg, Octavian de Palatio, Kite, Cromer — nearly all Englishmen — were appointed by the Pope, in almost unbroken succession, from 1347 to 1522. In 1543 George Dowdall was appointed by Henry VIII. He became a bitter opponent of the Reforma tion, and was deprived of his title of Primate of all Ireland by Edward VI. Queen Mary recalled him from exile, and restored him to his see, Hugh Goodacre, whom Edward had appointed in his place, being compelled to make way for him.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 433
The next primate was Adam Loftus, a native of Yorkshire, who came over to Ireland as Chaplain to the Lord Deputy, being also Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth, with whom he was a great favourite, and though only twenty-eight years of age, he was elevated to the primacy. But this was not sufficient to satisfy his ambition or to answer the Queen’s objects. He was accordingly translated to Dublin in 1567, and there, in addition to his archbishopric, he held the offices of Keeper of the Great Seal, Lord Chancellor, and Provost of Trinity College. He continued in this high position for forty-two years, and died, worn out with age, in 1605, having founded the noble house now represented by the Marquis of Ely. Pie was succeeded in Armagh by two Englishmen and a native of Kilkenny, after whom came Henry Ussher and Christopher Hampton. The last was a public-spirited man, who built a handsome palace at Drogheda, repaired the palace at Armagh, and bestowed on it a domain of 300 acres. He was succeeded by the cele brated Primate Ussher, the glory of the Irish Establishment, a divine of whom it may be said that his praise was in all the churches, his wisdom being equal to his learning, and all his powers being consecrated to God and his country. Having lost his property in the rebellion of 1641, he retired to England, where he died, at Reigate, in 1655, aged 75. So greatly was his character respected, even by those who differed from him in religion, that the Protector Cromwell gave a special order for his interment in Westminster Abbey. Two natives of Yorkshire next occupied the primatial chair in succession, the first being Bramhall, who came over as Chaplain to Lord Strafford, expressly to assist him in reforming the Irish Establishment on the Laudean model.
Passing over Archbishops Boyle, Marsh, and Lindsay, we come to the celebrated Primate Boulter, who was appointed in 1724, arid who ruled the diocese till 1742. During this long period of eighteen years he took a leading and most influential part in all public affairs connected with Church and State. This was the era of the penal code, which this Primate endeavoured to work so as to secure the conversion
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434 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of the natives, chiefly by means of education, by which he hoped to attach to the Establishment at least the rising generation of Roman Catholics. For this purpose the “ Charter Schools “ were founded, and amply endowed by the State, as proselytizing seminaries, in which young Papists were boarded and educated, that they might be kept totally free from parental influence. There never was a greater failure than this system proved. It was utterly unsound and corrupt, and demoralized everybody connected with it. The voluminous correspondence of Primate Boulter throws much light upon the state of Ireland at that time. He was succeeded by Dr. Hoadly, who had been Archbishop of Dub lin, and had built a palace for himself at Tallaght. Primate Stone came next, and was, like Boulter, a man of great energy and talent for business, which he devoted to the support of the Government and the extension of the Church among the natives. Primate Robinson, who succeeded in 1765, has left a great name as a benefactor of his see, from which he derived the princely income of about £20,000 a year. He built the palace of Armagh, and houses for the vicars- choral. He also established a public school, an excellent public library, an observatory, and an infirmary. He built several churches in the neighbourhood of Armagh, at Drogheda, and other places. In 1777 he was created Baron Rokeby, and inherited a baronetcy on the death of his elder brother. By his will he left £1,000 to the Lying-in Hospital in Dublin.
Dr. Newcome was translated from Waterford to this see in 1795, but lived to enjoy it only five years. His successor, the Honorable William Stuart, fifth son of the Earl of Bute, had a still shorter tenure. He was enthroned in December, 1800, and died in May, 1802, aged sixty-eight. The vacancy was filled up by the younger son of an Irish peer, the Marquis of Waterford. Lord John George Beresford, the late Lord Primate, was born at Tyrone House, in Dublin, in 1773. When he was only twenty-eight years of age he was ap pointed Dean of Clogher. When he was thirty-two he was consecrated Bishop of Cork and Ross. In two years he was
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 435
translated to Raphoe, which he held for twelve years ; then he was translated to Clogher, which he held for one year. He was next made Archbishop of Dublin, where he had been only two years, when this greatest prize in the Irish Estab lishment fell into his hands. He died in 1862, having been a bishop for the long period of fifty-seven years, during forty of which he was Lord Primate. The amount of Church revenue which he received during that period was something enormous, estimated at £700,000. But he dis pensed it liberally. He was one of the most benevolent of prelates, and was a munificent benefactor of the religious, charitable, and educational institutions connected with his diocese. He also aided poor curates, and maintained some altogether at his own cost. He had been from the first opposed to the National system of education, inheriting the spirit of Primate Boulter so far as to hold that to the clergy of the Established Church belonged of right the control of all the State education of the country. Towards the close of his life, however, he saw that many of the Church schools in his diocese were languishing for want of support, that the pay of the teachers was miserable, and the education imparted almost worthless, while the children of Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, availing themselves of the Superior education offered by the State, were advancing themselves in society, and leaving the children of the Church far behind.
The Lord Primate, who was president of the Church Education Society, and always the most munificent contri butor to its support, on the 21st of February, 1860, addressed a circular to the patrons of schools in connexion with the Clogher Diocesan Church Education Society.
After introductory remarks on the failure of the attempts to obtain Government aid for the Church Education Society Schools as such, the Archbishop proceeds : — “ The Society’s schools, it is evident, must continue to be dependant for their support on their own resources. A considerable number of them, I am happy to say, are adequately provided for, are in an efficient state, and are diffusing the benefits of good
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436 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
education in their respective localities. These schools it is our duty to cherish, and to carry on in conformity with the prin ciples on which they were founded; and we ought to endeavour to improve them still further for the advantage of the poor.
“ It is to be regretted, however, that many of the schools are in a condition far from satisfactory. Several of them are quite inefficient, owing to the want of adequate funds ; the salaries are not large enough to secure the services of pro perly qualified teachers ; and the supply of books and other school requisites foils very short of what is called for.
“ It is for the patrons of these impoverished and inefficient schools to judge whether, by renewed efforts, they can raise them from their depressed condition, so that the youthful members of the Church may not be left without the secular instruction which is needed to qualify them for competing with those of other communions in the struggles of life which lie before them. If exertions for this purpose can be made with any hope of success, they ought to be made promptly. But if all expectation of increasing the funds of these schools be at an end, and the evils attending a defective education of the children be imminent, then, it appears to me, that it would be advisable to seek for aid from the Commissioners of National Education, rather than allow the children of our communion to grow up in a state of ignorance, or expose them to the danger which would arise from their resorting
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for secular education to National schools under the manage ment and influence of patrons who are hostile to our Church. “ Some of you have been endeavouring to keep up five, some six, schools in your parishes, to meet the wants of the large population under your charge. I am aware of the great difficulty of such an undertaking ; and I cannot but admire the perseverance you have manifested under your discourage ments, and the attachment you have evinced to the Church Education Society. I sympathize with you while I offer you my advice, and recommend you, under the pressing necessity of the case, to submit to the rules of a system which, in one important particular, we cannot approve of. But I am sure that those of you who may feel it requisite to have recourse
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 437
to this alternative of connecting your schools with the National Board, will deem yourselves bound honestly to act in accordance with its regulations, and to keep faith with the Commissioners. And I would further suggest, that in every such case you should explain to your parishioners that it is from a regard for the interests of their children, and influenced solely by that consideration, you are constrained to avail yourselves of this, the only means by which you can provide a suitable education for them.
“ No change whatever ought, I conceive, to be made in the fundamental laws of the Church Education Society. In connexion with it will remain those schools which are con ducted on its principles, and which, by their efficiency, will do credit to those principles. And, for their benefit, the valuable Training Institution in Dublin will, I hope, be kept up in its present admirable order. Towards effecting this object, my annual contribution to the funds of the Central Society shall be continued. The upholding of a class of schools independent of State support, and unshackled by the restrictions which it imposes, is, in my opinion, of great importance to the interests of education in the country, and is in some places essential to the interests of religion. In reference to schools under your superintendence, the patrons of which are landed proprietors, I should wish you to submit for their consideration the suggestions which I have offered on this subject. If I were merely to consult my own ease, I should, at my advanced time of life, have allowed things to remain as they are, and have left this long-agitated question to settle itself after my removal from the world. But if I were to do so, and to shrink from making this effort to place the education of the poor in my diocese in a better condition than it has been of late years, I feel that I should not be acting for the best interests of the Church over which I have been appointed to preside. I therefore determined to offer the advice conveyed in this letter. And, in conclu sion, I earnestly pray God that we may all of us both 1 perceive and know what things we ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.’ “
438 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Although up to that time Primate Beresford was the object of the highest possible veneration with the Estab lished Clergy in. all parts of the country, the moment this letter appeared in the newspapers a tempest of clerical vituperation began to beat upon his devoted head. The intensity of the fanatical fury with which he was assailed may be inferred from the fact that he was compared to Judas Iscariot. If a prelate so pious, so revered, so munifi cent, so loyal during his whole career to the cause of Pro testant ascendancy, of which his house had been the main stay for generations, was treated in this manner by the Established clergy for a conscientious difference, what must have been the measure of ecclesiastical wrath poured out upon the humble advocates of free arid united education, who felt it their duty to plead for the children of poor Protestants debarred from the blessings of a sound secular instruction supplied by the State ?
The present Archbishop is another member of the same fortunate family — the Most Rev. Marcus Gervais Beresford, second son of the late Bishop of Kilmore. He was born in 1801, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1820. He was a rector when he was only twenty-four years of age, with £582 per annum ; vicar- general of his father’s diocese, and rector of Drung and Lara, with £1,125 a year, when only twenty-seven; and conse crated Bishop of the same diocese in 1854. He was one of the Grand Chaplains of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, when the Duke of Cumberland was Grand Master. When Archdeacon of Kilmore he proposed Sir John Young for re-election as member for the county of Cavan. He was so highly favoured by the Government of the day, that when appointed Bishop of Kilmore he was permitted to name his successor in the archdeaconry. He selected an able man of strong political opinions, Dr. Martin, who still holds the office. Like other men now in high positions, whose spirit has been chastened by years and the sense of responsibility, his Grace of Armagh sowed the wild oats of bigotry and political fanaticism in his early days, when the Established
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 439
clergy as a body, and especially the aristocratic portion of them, struggled desperately to prevent the passing of Catholic Emancipation, and to maintain inviolate the old Constitution in Church and State, after it had passed. I do not think there is a single clergyman in the Irish Church at the present day, not excepting Orange chaplains, who would use the language reported to have been employed by the Rev. Marcus G. Beresford, the son of a bishop, at a meeting held in the Round Room of the Mansion House, Dublin, on the 14th of August, 1834. If I reproduce it now, it is only in the discharge of my duty as a faithful historian, in order to mark the progress that even Irish society has made in the course of a generation. The room was decorated with an orange banner, belonging to the Royal Pembroke Lodge, No. 505, and a blue one belonging to No. lv 34, the members of which were styled the Adelaide Blues. There was a brilliant display of orange sashes and cockades, and most of those on the platform exhibited orange and blue handker chiefs. In order to account for such an exhibition on a platform in the Mansion House, it must be remembered that the reform of the Corporation did not take place till some years later, and that under the old regime the Mansion House was the temple of Protestant ascendancy. It was in the midst of such surroundings that the Rev. Marcus Gervais Beresford said : — “Gentlemen, we have an ecclesias tical commission : we are always to be beset with commis sioners dividing the people into every sect. In a letter which I received from one of those commissioners they stated that they received instructions to inquire into the state of religious instruction ; but I refused to answer them ; and if
& ‘
every clergyman does his duty they will receive 110 infor mation. I told them that I would thank them to find out how and what the priests teach the people. What do the Popish priests teach the people after Mass ?’ I have heard the people say, ‘ Oh, we heard a very good sermon after Mass/ But on asking them what it was, they would tell me it was about an anti- tithe meeting ; or a direction from the priest to pay their dues, under pain of damnation ; or
440 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
that Ireland would be ruined if the O’Connell tribute were not paid ; or an exhortation to stand forward like men for the support of a Repeal candidate, for the sake of old Mother Church. The priests keep their flocks in the most brutal ignorance ; they place on their arms the manacles of super stition ; they rear them up rebels from their cradles. The Papists are taught a little religion out of Reilly’s catechism ; they are taught that the priests can forgive sins, and that they receive this power from Jesus Christ. They are next taught that the Virgin Mary is the Queen of Heaven ; and they are also taught to make a number of crosses in order to enable them to go through the Mass without being burdened with any quantity of prayers. Ask the ignorant Papists who God is, and they cannot give you a rational answer. Ask them why the Saviour took flesh, and they cannot tell you. I therefore say that if those commissioners act fairly they will take out those Roman Catholics who are brutually ignorant, and place the remainder in juxtaposition with the Protestants, and I venture to assert that the Protestants will have the majority. And, again, my lords and gentlemen, those commissioners will find out that, notwithstanding the persecution and villany that have been practised by the Govern ment against us, our congregations are increasing; that parish churches are building in most places in Ireland, and that the religion of the Protestant Church is going on prospering, and to prosper. They will find that the clergy of our Church have set their faces against Bible exclusion. And although we have been deprived of the means of building schools, our schools are increasing. My lords, those that preach the truth in Ireland are persecuted. But shall it long continue ? Last May there was one of the curates of the diocese to which I belong who had his skull fractured, not because he got his tithe, but out of hatred to Protestantism. But how do the Protestant clergy bear all this ? They bear it with Christian fortitude and meekness. We have been offered a bonus to stop our mouths; but in place of £100,000 to stop the mouths of the Protestant clergymen, it would not stop the mouth of one honest man amongst us, No, the National
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 44l
Debt would not stop our mouths. We will hand down our institutions to those that will come after us, pure and un sullied. We will get rid of the bloody Popish rebels from amongst us. We will stock our lands with honest Protest ants. We will banish the illicit distiller from amongst us, who is a disgrace to us. I would — and I declare it most solemnly (here the reverend speaker raised his voice and his arm) — I would rather eat a potato and salt with a good Protestant than live like a king in the midst of Papists.”
This speech appeared in the Dublin Evening Post on the 18th of August. If the report was false, the publication was a gross and malicious libel ; but the paper was never prose cuted. Yet, I could scarcely believe it possible that a speech so truculent could have been delivered by any Christian gentleman, or any British subject, in his senses, even at a meeting of the lowest Orange lodge. I therefore examined the file of a Conservative paper, the Maunders News-Letter, .which, in its impression of the 15th August, 1834, contained a very long report of the meeting in question. It was occasioned by the Irish Tithe Bill, then before Parliament. Not only was the Round-Room of the Mansion House given for the purpose, but the Lord Mayor presided, and it was one of the largest and most influential Protestant meetings ever held in Ireland. Among the nobility present were Lords Downshire, Rodeii, Mayo, Winchelsea, Longford, Rath- down, Bandon, Courtown, Norbury, Massareene, Castlemaine, Lorton, Downes, Mandeville, &c., &c. One of the gentlemen who acted as secretaries to the meeting was Mr. Napier, late Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Lord Rodeii, one of the principal speakers, said, “ I cannot forget that I am an Orangeman ;” and before the meeting broke up, he exhorted all present “ to unite in the Orange bond.” The most powerful cham pions of Protestant ascendancy then, in Ireland were on the platform — the Rev. Dr. Boyton, F.T.C.D., the Rev. Robert M’Ghee, Mr. George Alexander Hamilton, and Lord Win chelsea. The speaking was of a very exciting character; and I find that the report in Saunders’ News-Letter corrobo rates the Evening Poxt as to the exhibition of orange sashes
442 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and ribbons, adding, “ Orange handkerchiefs waved on all sides.” Six or seven resolutions had been spoken to, in some cases very eloquently, when the Rev. Marcus Beresford rose to second a resolution of thanks to the Peers for throwing out the Irish Tithe Bill. His speech, coming so late in the day, was condensed by the reporter, no doubt for want of space. But it probably would have been so from prudential considerations by the judicious editor of Saundera, in consequence of the violence of its language. It states, however, that Mr. Beresford “spoke with much warmth,” and gives a portion of the passage about the brutal ignorance of the Papists, and the disloyalty of the priests. The reverend gentleman said, “ We shall transmit it (the Church property) to our successors without the incurnbrance of the Catholic rebels and the illicit distillers on our glebes. We shall transmit it with sound, honest Protestants in. their stead.” He also stated, according to this Conservative report, that “tlte prices tauyht llivu’ fl.ucks to ‘he rebels!’
It is the more extraordinary that such a speech should have been delivered by Mr. Beresford at that time, or that he should have appeared at all on a public platform ; because during the previous year he had been involved in a quarrel with one of his curates, which was regarded by the public as a case of cruel clerical oppression.
The Rev. Thomas A. Lyons came over from England in July, 1831, at the request of his friend, the present Arch deacon Martin, rector of Killyshandra, in the same diocese. On the 9th of January, 1834, Dr. Martin bore the following testimony to the character of his friend: — “I have been for very many years intimately acquainted with the Rev. Th. A. Lyons. I consider him to be a clergyman of very deep and sincere impressions regarding religion, and of very exemplary and unexceptionable character and morals. He possesses, in my judgment, considerable talents as a preacher, and much ability and energy in diffusing the views of which he has satisfied himself from the study of the word of God. I may add, that he attaches far more weight than seems to “be usual with clergymen in Ireland, to a punctual observance
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 443
of the rules and regulations of the Church which he has pledged himself solemnly to maintain.”
Desirous that Mr. Lyons should remain in the diocese, he mentioned him to Mr. Beresford, Vicar-General, and son of the Bishop, who thereupon expressed a wish that Mr. Lyons should join him in the ministry of his parish of Drung. He consented, and was ordained a priest by the incumbent’s father, who received the new curate at the palace, and visited him at his residence more than once. His lordship appointed him Lent preacher the only two Lent seasons he had been in the diocese. He was also summoned to the diocesan visitations, and thus fully recognised as a clergyman of the diocese. Under these circumstances, Mr. Lyons thought that it was wholly unnecessary to apply to his bishop for a licence, as it might have betrayed a feeling of distrust, and possibly have given offence. Such were the relations of the parties when unfortunately a misunderstanding arose between Mr. Beresford and his curate. Mr. Lyons had been in the habit of catechising the children publicly in the church on Sundays. But the vicar gave notice suddenly to the congregation that the catechising on Sunday in the church should be discon tinued, and he ordered his curate to perform that part of his duty in two other places on week days. Mr. Lyons, who was a great stickler for Church order, believed that this would be a direct violation of the canon law, and would expose him to heavy punishment. He therefore remonstrated with Mr. Beresford, who told him “ that he would dispense with his services for the future.” He then wrote to the Bishop, calling his lordship’s attention in the most respectful terms to the facts, and stating that he was most anxious “to have his lordship’s direction and advice as to what course he should pursue under these very peculiar circumstances.” To this letter the Bishop replied as follows : —
“REVEREND SIR, — On looking into the llth canon, I see that every clergyman is directed to catechise, &c., &c., &c., before evening service. But I do not find that it is prohibited to catechise anywhere else. Of course, I shall show your letter to Mr. Beresford, and hear his statement on the subject.— I am, Reverend Sir, yours faithfully,
“ GEORGE KILMORE,
“To the Rev. Thomas A, Lyons,”
444 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Mr. Lyons wrote again, confidently appealing to the Bishop, “whether his conscientious regard for the discipline of the Church, and his dread of incurring his lordship’s censure, was such an offence as to warrant the instant suspension of his spiritual functions ; or whether the inattention he might have shown to his worldly interests in not soliciting the formal protection of a licence, should now subject him to so heavy a penalty as the sudden deprivation of the means of subsistence.” In this communication, the curate enclosed a copy of a letter he had received the night before from the vicar, which taught him how dangerous it was to appeal from a bishop’s son to his father. This memorable letter made some noise at the time, and it well deserves to be handed down to posterity : —
“Dec. 31, 1833.
u DEAR SIR, — I regret that I am necessitated to adopt the only course that is left open to me, which is, to notice you that I have no further need of your services as curate of Drang. This day, which concludes the year, must end the connexion between us. I trust we shall part as we met, in peace and charity. My last payment to you paid your salary up to the first of this month. Since that I owe you for one month, which, being a long month of thirty-one days, amounts, as near as I can calculate, to £6 8s. My steward returns you as a debtor to the amount of £7 10s. for conacre ground, which leaves some trifling balance in my favour. As I have no desire to inconvenience you in any respect, the parsonage house is at your service till it may suit you to move. As it wTould be best to name a specific time, I would say till the 1 st of March next.
u Another point I would beg to remind 3-011 of, which is, that as you are not a licensed curate (I never having prayed the Bishop to grant you a licence for my parish), this notice is perfectly valid and sufficient.
“ Yours truly,
“M. G. BERESFORD.
“ To the Rev. Thos. A. Lyons.”
Mr. Lyons was also favoured with an answer from the Bishop to his appeal for protection. It is a fine example of the laconic, and seems to have been meant to cut the heart, like the exulting sneer of Mephistopheles : —
“ Jan. 4, 1834. “ REV. SIR, — It is now late to apply for a licence.
“ I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully,
“ GEORGE, KILMORE.”
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 445
The unfortunate curate now resolved to appeal to the Primate, as the highest authority in the Irish Church ; but he was still in the charmed family circle of the Beresfords, for the Primate and the Bishop of Kilmore were cousins ; and the proverb, that “Blood is thicker than water,” held good in the thick blood of the Beresfords. Yet they were not so much to blame as the system. How could an aged father be expected to dispense justice impartially between his son and a disobedient curate, who was a stranger, without friends ? And how could the Lord Primate, though one of the most amiable and benevolent of prelates, be expected to decide against his venerable and affectionate cousin of Kil more ? He received the curate kindly, however, at first, and exerted himself in an extra-official way to settle the dif ferences. The consequence was that the Bishop and his son offered half a year’s salary on condition that Mr. Lyons should leave the diocese. But he thought this a very inade quate compensation for having to break up his home, sell his furniture, and go forth into the world with a blighted character; to become, as he said himself, “a hopeless beggar — of all degraded men the most degraded — a degraded clergyman.” Mr. Lyons, therefore, refused the terms, and lodged a formal appeal with his Grace of Armagh. The appeal was peremptorily dismissed, on the ground that the appellant being a curate without licence had no locus standi.
It was in vain that the curate pleaded his privileges as a British subject, the bill of rights, his position as a recognised priest of the Church, the canon law, the authority of priests and divines, the interests of the Established Church, which — then in the crisis of its ‘ fate — would be damaged by the publication of the case, the feelings of Christian brother hood which the ministers of the Gospel ought to cherish towards each other, and every other consideration which could occur to the mind of an able, eloquent, and aggrieved clergyman. The young Vicar of Drung and Vicar-general of the diocese ; his father, the Bishop of Kilmore ; his cousin, the venerable Primate, continued inexorable and obdurate to the last. Poor Mr. Lyons attended the visitation in the
446 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
town of Cavan, and there begged permission of the Bishop of Kilmore to enter a protest under the term ‘‘complaint;” but the Bishop refused to hear him, on the plea that he had placed himself under the jurisdiction of a superior court, although the Primate had dismissed his case, on the groiind that he had no legal right to appear in his court. The curate, however, could not get a hearing, and he was in danger of being taken up by the police as a disturber and brawler in church. To add to the bitterness of his spirit, all the clergy present looked askance, and shunned him as “a speckled bird,” or a black sheep, or rather as a man smitten with spiritual rinderpest, which everybody was to assist in stamp ing out. This humiliating occurence subsequently wrung from Mr. Lyons the following rebuke : — “To those who then forgot the manliness of their character, who abased themselves from their otherwise dignified station, who per mitted the spirit of slavery to displace the disinterested, the noble spirit of their profession as ministers of Christ, be cause the frown of power rested upon one whom they knew to be blameless, one who never shrunk from what he deemed his duty to his Church, his clerical brethren, or himself — these words may recal a blush !”
At length, baffled in all his efforts to obtain justice, re pulsed with contumely and withering scorn from every palace and court of the Church for whose laws he contended, he appealed to the highest tribunal of all, and gave utter ance to his despair in a prayer for his bishop ; and should we be surprised if his prayer was conceived in the same spirit as the prayer of Pius IX. for the Emperor Napoleon ? In the postscript of his final letter to the Primate, the vic timised curate delivered his soul in the following impressive language : — “ Having thus minutely considered this case, I cannot, without shuddering, contemplate an act, abstracted even from its personal consecjuences to myself, of a nature such as this, done by one clergyman towards another, and sanctioned by an archbishop and a bishop. A bishop, too, treading upon the very verge of eternity; tottering, with feeble steps, upon the earth to which he must shortly de-
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 447
scend, dust to its kindred dust; pronouncing such an excuse as this with the imperfect and thickened utterance of aged debility; using such a subterfuge to deprive a clergyman of his property and of his reputation, by blighting, as far as possible, with the scowl of irresponsible power, that clergy man’s reasonable prospects ; and this in the very house of God! — of that God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity ; who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and whose eye searches the hearts and reins of his creatures, whether raised by a transitory exaltation above their fellows of the dust, or lowly taking their way as humble priests of his altar. Before this heart-searching God must the Bishop of Kilmore shortly, in the course of nature, stand, disrobed of his earthly power; and may God, for the sake of our blessed Lord, forgive him this great cruelty, as I shall en deavour to do this attempt to crush me, temporally, by an act of unexampled, of shameless, and of tyrannous oppres sion !”*
Mr. Lyons afterwards became rector of Dumnore. This quarrel was made the subject of a poetical squib, ascribed to Thomas Moore, with the following heading: —
“TiiE RECTOR AND HIS CURATE, OR ONE POUND Two. “I trust we shall part as we met, in peace and charity. My last pay ment to you paid your salary up to the 1st of this month, which, being a long month of thirty-one days, amounts, as near as I can calculate, to £6 8s. My steAvard returns you as a debtor to the amount of £7 105. for con-acre ground, which leaves some trifling balance in my favour.” [Letter of Dismissal from the Rev. Marcus Beresford to his Curate, the Rev. T. A. Lyons.]
u The account is settled— the bill’s drawn out —
The debit and credit all right, no doubt —
The rector rolling in wealth and state,
Owes to his curate six pound eight ;
The curate, most unfed of men,
Owes to the rector seven pound ten,
Which makes the balance clearly due
‘Twixt curate and rector, one pound two.
* “ A Case of Clerical Oppression, Illustrative of the Present State of the Internal Government of the Church in Ireland,” &c. London. James Hidgway and Sons, Piccadilly. 1834.
448 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
A balance on earth, unfair, uneven ! But sure to be all set right in heaven, Where bills like this will be checked some day, And the balance settled the other way ; Where Lyons the curate’s hard-wrung sum Shall back to his shade with interest come, And Marcus the rector may sorely rue That tot in his favour of one pound two.”
Bishop Beresford survived till 1841, when he was suc ceeded by Dr. John. Leslie, Bishop of Elphin, who became Bishop of the dioceses of Kilmore, Ardagh, and Elphin, united under the Church Temporalities Act. The next vacancy occurred in 1854, and of all the grave, learned, wise, moderate divines in the Irish Church, who does the reader think was selected by the Earl of Aberdeen to fill the see of Bishop Bedell? It was the same clergyman who wrote to his curate — “ Since that I owe you for one month, which, being a long month of thirty-one days, amounts, as near as I can calculate, to £6 8s. My steward returns you as a debtor to the amount of £-7 10-s\ for con-acre ground, which leaves some trifling balance in my favour.” The very same clergyman who declared, at an Orange meeting at the Mansion House, Dublin, that he refused to answer the in quiries of the King’s Commissioners, that the Government had practised persecution and villany against the clergy, who had been offered a bonus of «£*] 00,000 to stop their mouths, adding, at the same time, emphatically and sub limely, that the National Debt would not stop their mouths. The same clergyman who was reported to have exclaimed : — “We will get rid of the bloody Popish rebels from amongst us, and stock our land with honest Protestants !”
Yet, perhaps, the appointment of the Vicar of Drung to the diocese of Kilmore was not so unaccountable as the ap pointment of the same divine, by Lord Palmerston, to the highest place in the Irish Establishment, on the death of his cousin, the late Primate.
The diocese of Armagh includes all the county of Armagh and most of Louth, nearly half of Tyrone, and a small part
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 44,9
of Deny and Meath. The diocese of Clogher, united to it by the Church Temporalities Act, includes the counties of Monaghan and Fermanagh, with parts of Tyrone, Donegal, and Louth, having between them an area of about a million and three quarters statute acres. The number of benefices in Armagh is 71, and of perpetual or district cures 37 — total, 108 ; the net income of the clergy being £32,094. The Archbishop is the patron of 46 livings, incumbents appoint to 35, Trinity College to 6, lay patrons to 10, and the Crown to 5. Clogher has 44 benefices and 33 perpetual cures — total, 77; the net income of the clergy being £18,337. The bishop appoints to 36 livings, incumbents to 28, Trinity College to 4, lay patrons to 8. The total number of benefices in the united dioceses is 185, and the total amount of net income of the clergy in both is £50,431. The revenue of the Archbishop of Armagh in 1833 was £14,500 net; but the Primate stated that it was fairly capable of increase to the extent of about £7,000 more, and it was generally estimated at £20,000. The see lands were said to compre hend 104,000 acres. The vestry assessments for Church purposes were £3,800 a year on an average. The glebe houses were valued at £84,000, and the extent of glebe lands was nearly 20,000 acres. In 1834 the places of worship belonging to the Establishment were 99, to the Presbyterians 68, to other Protestant Dissenters 44, and to Roman Catholics 120. At that time the numbers of the different religious denominations respectively were — Established Church, 103,012; Presbyterians, 84,837 ; other Protestant Dissenters, 3,340. Total Protestant population in the diocese, 191,189 ; total Roman Catholic population, 309,447. Thus we see that in the primatial diocese of Armagh, situated in the Protestant North, from which, at the time of the Ulster plantation, the native population had been cleared out, the Roman Catholic population had increased and multiplied, first under the penal code, and then under Orange land lordism, until they exceeded the Established Church population by three to one, and the total Protestant popula tion by more than 118,258, or not very far from two to one.
2 G
450 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Such were some of the facts and figures which British statesmen had before them when they passed the Church Temporalities Act, and which the good old sailor king, with pious tears rolling down his cheeks, refused to alter in any way, lest he should have to answer for the sacrilege to the King of kings.
The city of Armagh was plundered and burned in the middle ages more frequently, perhaps, than any other city in Ireland, the cathedral being always involved more or less in the common destruction. The present cathedral was erected in 1 077. It was greatly improved by the munificent Primate Robinson ; yet in 183-4 the Commissioners on Ecclesiastical Revenue and Patronage reported that it was in a dilapidated state from age, and it was pronounced by the provincial architect to be unworthy of any considerable expenditure in the way of improvement. It Avas, however, renovated, chiefly by the liberality of the late Primate. It is strange that it was allowed to remain so long in a decayed condition. I remember it in that state. The accumulating mould of the surrounding graveyard had risen so high in the course of ages, that the building, though situated on the summit of a small hill overlooking the town, was partly buried. The ground, therefore, had to be lowered to bring it to a level. But how was this to be done ? The human mould was carted down to a valley called the Mall, at the other side of the town, and spread over the meadow as top-dressing. I have seen it thus disposed of in thick layers. No doubt great care was taken to pick up the fragments of human bones, and redeposit them within the sacred enclosure. Still the process was very unpleasant to behold and think about to those who believe in the resur rection from the dead. It is scarcely necessary to add that the crops of hay upon that piece of ground were of the most luxuriant character.
The cost of the restoration was met by a general subscrip tion ; but the greater part was contributed by the Primate, amounting, it is said, to £20,000. It is a cruciform building, in the usual cathedral style ; and although it is small and
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 451
unimposing in comparison with the grand English cathedrals, the editor of “ Murray’s Handbook “ states that “ the whole cathedral is pleasing and grateful to the English eye, for every portion of it denotes a careful and zealous watch over it. The organ is good, and the choral service very well performed.” There is another very commodious and pleasantly situated church, St. Mark’s, at the opposite side of the Mall.
Rich and beautiful as the old cathedral is, however, it has been almost eclipsed by the magnificent Roman Catholic cathedral, which lifts its lofty towers on a neighbouring hill, and of which the erection was commenced by Archbishop Crolly.
Armagh is often referred to by defenders of the Establish ment as a model diocese ; and certainly, if anywhere, it is here that we might expect the state of things to be as it should be. Yet it is to be feared a faithful parochial history of the diocese would disclose much that is far from satisfactory. I abstain, however, from personal details, and reference to particular abuses, which, I am glad to say, are far less numerous and glaring than they were some years ago. We do not now perceive in so many instances the members of the Church, through sheer neglect in the clergy, or a want of adaptation to their work, lapsing into dissent, nor is Protestantism to so large an extent identified with political animosity and intolerance towards Roman Catholics.
When the confiscated lands of Ulster were being distributed by the Crown, it must be confessed that the Established Church got an ample share. In fact, many of the rectors have splendid landed estates, varying in quantity from 50 to 900 acres. One parish has 3,29 L acres, several have more than 600, many 300, 400, or 500 each. In the diocese of Armagh there are 36 benefices, which have a total of 17,000 statute acres. The total value of this land is returned as £14,331. Now, it is well known that land in that part of the country is about the most valuable in Ireland, and that glebe land is very often so situated as to bring exceptionally high rents, like town parks. Instead, therefore, of being
2 G 2
452
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
rated at much less than a pound an acre, on an average it ought to be rated at two pounds, and the 17,000 acres belonging to the 36 benefices alluded to ought to yield £30,000 a year instead of half that sum. But, even at the low valuation, the net incomes of the clergy are very large, £500, £600, £700, £800, £900, and in one case £1,144, being the sums received. In the diocese of Cloa’her 25 benefices have a total
O
of 10,493 statute acres, or about 420 acres each. One has 797, another 703, another 900, and one 1,200, which of4 course yield proportionally large incomes. But the money value set down for 10,493 acres is only £6,983, whereas it ought to be £15,000 or £20,000. If this be so, an enormous amount of Church property is lost in those dioceses, and the same may be said of the North of Ireland generally.
The subjoined table presents at one view the total number of benefices, the total net income of the clergy, the average income of each beneficed clergyman, the cost per head of the Church population, the total population of the diocese, the total number of Church members, and their proportion to the whole of the people : —
oi
0
Propor
CO
Ave-
Estab
tion of
Diocese.
. of Bene
Net lra*°?)r *-><- I,™ bent.
Head of Church
Population.
Total Popula tion.
lished Church Popula tion.
Church Members to entire Popula
&
tion.
£
£
£ s. d.
Percent.
Armagh, .
108
32,094
297
076
386,200
85,583
22
Clogher, . .
77
18,182
23G
057
262,572
65,195
25
Total for united diocese,
185
50,270
271
0 G 8
648,832
150,778
23
Clogher is at present a mere village in the county of Tyrone, on the road between Aughnacloy and Emiiskilien. The cathedral is a cruciform, plain, and commodious building
7 1 O*
but the chief distinction of the place is the episcopal palace, which is a large modern mansion in the midst of a finely planted park of 500 acres. It once had an abbey and a monastery as well as a cathedral, said, of course, to have been
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 453
founded by St. Patrick. The net revenue of the see was formerly about £9,000 a year, till it was united to Armagh by the Church Temporalities Act. The Roman Catholic diocese of Clogher still remains separate. There was one Bishop of Clogher who deserves to be mentioned, Dr. Stearne. He seems to have acted upon the principle enforced by the Roman Catholic bishops of Ireland, that what he got by the Church should be expended on the Church. Bishop Stearne was Vice-Chancellor of the Dublin University. He left it £12,000 for a printing press, ten exhibitions, all his printed books, and his valuable collection of MSS. His ambition was not to leave to posterity a name great in the 3| per cents.”
* The following is a list of “ Bishop Stearne’ s Charities :” —
.£80 per annum to a Catechist, to be chosen by the clergy of Dublin every third year.
,£40 per jyinum to the Chaplain of Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin.
His estate at Ballough, county Dublin, after the deaths of his nephew and his sisters, to Steevens’ Hospital.
£20 per annum out of the above estate, to Mercer’s Alms-houses, Dublin,
£200 to the same Alms-houses, built and endowed for bringing up twenty-five poor girls as household servants.
£40 per annum to the Lying-in-Hospital, Dublin.
£100 per annum for binding apprentices five sons of deceased poor clergymen.
£400 to the Blue Coat Hospital, Dublin.
£600 to Dean Swift’s Hospital for Lunatics.
£100 towards building a spire on St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
£50 per annum between ten Exhibitions in Trinity College, Dublin — poor scholars from the diocese of Clogher to have the preference.
£30 per annum to increase the fund of Mr. Chetwood’s charity.
His remaining books (see above), to Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin, such as were wanting there, and the rest to the curates of his diocese.
£2,000 to the Trustees of First Fruits, for the purchase of glebes or impropriatc tithes ; one-third of the yearly value to be remitted to the incumbent during his residence, the other two-thirds to be paid to the Trustees until they shall have been reimbursed the purchase-money, which is then to be employed for the benefit of some other incumbent.
£1,500, or £2,000, at the discretion of his executors, towards finishing the Cathedral of Clogher.
454 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
In 1798 Bishop Porter was translated to this see from Killala, and rilled it for twenty-one years. He amassed a large sum of money, but instead of founding charities, he founded a wealthy family. The last of the Bishops of Clogher was the Right Hon. Lord Robert Ponsonby Tottenham Loftus.
I proceed to give a brief account of the progress of the Roman Catholic Church in the diocese of Armagh, and in connexion with this subject a few pages are due to the life and character of Dr. Crolly, the most distinguished Roman Catholic primate in modern times. Dr. Crolly first became known as a professor in the College of Maynooth, and while he was there an amusing incident occurred, and is thus related by his nephew, Professor Crolly : — “ A gentleman connected with the establishment became deranged, and laboured under the delusion that he was dead. One morning before his condition was known, he went into the Professor’s room in a state of great excitement, and complained bitterly that he had not attended his funeral. ‘ Why,’ said Dr. Crolly, ‘the fact is, I would have attended your funeral, but Father Paul would not come with me, and I think you have greater reason to complain of him than of me.’ The lunatic then went to Father Paul’s apartments, and finding that gentleman in bed, he demanded what objection he had to attend his funeral. He declared he had no objection what ever, and he should certainly have gone had he heard of his death. ‘ Oh, you need not tell me such a story,’ answered the madman, ‘ for I know that you not only stayed away yourself, but hindered Dr. Crolly from coming, and now I will be buried here and nowhere else, and you must write an epitaph and put it over me.’ He then lay down under the hearth-rug. Father Paul had by this time hastily dressed himself, and began to think in what manner he could get rid of his unwelcome visitor. Being commanded to prepare the epitaph, he took a sheet of paper, and wrote upon it the following distich : —
“ ‘ Your scraggedy snout shall snuff the moon ; Why, d your eyes, did you die so soon ?’
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 455
“ ‘ I’ll not lie under that epitaph/ cried the dead man. ‘ You must/ answered Father Paul. ‘ I’ll not/ said he, start ing up, and rushing out of the room.”
In 1825 Dr. Crolly was appointed coadjutor Bishop of Down and Connor, to which diocese he afterwards succeeded, and where he was greatly respected by the people of Belfast of all denominations. Soon after his appointment an inquiry took place on the state of the Belfast Institution. He Avas examined, and gave the most decided testimony in favour of united education, “as tending to extinguish party animosities, and generating kindly feelings.” Before Dr. Crolly was a bishop, the four Catholic archbishops, Drs. Curtis, Murray, Laffan, and Kelly, advocated a system of mixed education, declaring that there could be no possible objection to Catholics receiving “ a scientific education from Protestants. Nay, in the year 1829, Dr. Doyle wished to have a portion of the funds of the Catholic Association applied to the establishment of an institution in which the middling classes would be educated without distinction of creed ; and he thought the Belfast College might be taken as the model for the formation of this new establishment. Long after Eman cipation had been conceded, in the year 1811, the Supreme Pontiff, Gregory XVI., declared, after accurately weighing all its dangers and advantages, that Catholics might attend schools, the masters of which were not Catholics, provided every exertion was used to have no instruction given in religion, morality, or sacred history, or that such instruction should be imparted by a Catholic, as it is unseemly to have these things taught by any other. He even added, that when the safeguards already enumerated were obtained, and diligently observed, the bishops would easily understand that it must be inferred that the religion and virtue of the children were sufficiently provided for.”*
On the decease of the Most Rev. Dr. Kelly in 1835, Dr. Crolly became Archbishop of Armagh. His zeal and activity did not relax in this more extended sphere.
* Life of the Most Rev. Dr. Crolly. By the Rev. George Crolly, Professor of Theology, Maynooth, p. 59,
456 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
“ He carried with him to the primacy all the energy and zeal which had distinguished him in his native diocese. He did not find in Armagh, any more than in Down and Connor, a seminary for the scientific as well as for the religious training of Catholic youth, but especially of those who were destined for the sacred ministry. He set to work at once to remedy this evil, and having procured a beautiful, healthful, and convenient site, on a hill beside the town of Armagh, he erected on it the present large and elegant diocesan seminary. The actual was nearly double the esti mated expense of the building, and to make up the difference, Dr. Crolly advanced £GOO out of his own pocket, for which he went in debt to an amount nearly equal to all he was worth. He afterwards purchased for its accommodation the tenant-right of some land which lay contiguous to it. The entire sum which he advanced at different times for this purpose amounted to £300. On the 17th March, 1840, he laid the foundation of the new Cathedral of Armagh — an edifice which, even in its unfinished state, might vie in majesty of design, and beauty of workmanship, with those hallowed fanes which uprose from the fervid devotion of the Middle Ages, and which, even now, in their solitary ruins, reproach the apathy and indifference of our utilitarian generation.”*
The memory of Primate Crolly will not be the less respected by the friends of religious freedom, because it has been virulently assailed on account of his liberality by writers of the Ultramontane party. It was with the view of reversing his conciliatory policy that the election of his successor, by the parish priests in the usual way, was set aside at Rome, and that Dr. Cullen, who had become estranged from the country by long residence in Rome, was appointed directly by the Pope. When Archbishop Cullen was translated to Dublin, in order to carry out more effect ually the policy of separation, especially in the work of education, Dr. Dixon, a moderate divine, and a very estimable character, succeeded to the office of Primate. He was not * Life of Dr. Crolly, p. 87.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 457
ambitious, and he did not interfere with the supremacy of Archbishop Cullen, who was invested with Legatine powers by the Pope. Primate Dixon died lately, and has been succeeded by Dr. Kienm, a clergyman of the diocese, whom the parish priests elected as dignissimus. The ceremony of his consecration took place in his own church at Dundalk, on Sunday, 3rd February, 18G7. Cardinal Cullen, assisted by a number of prelates, and about seventy priests, per formed the ceremony. Several of the Catholic nobility and gentry were present, and among the rest Sir George Bowyer, M.P. for Dundalk. The newspapers stated that the honor able gentlemen walked in the procession of bishops and priests in the uniform of a deputy -lieutenant, the cross of St. Gregory, and the decorations of a Knight of Malta, and “ continued in attendance upon the Cardinal during the day.” If he had appeared in the uniform of the Pope, the thing would be in keeping with the ceremony and with the foreign decorations. If Protestant gentlemen were so silly as to appear at the consecration of a bishop of the Established Church dressed in the uniform of deputy-lieutenants, they would be laughed at. The reason why lay members of the Roman Catholic Church, more remarkable for zeal than discretion, are anxious to parade themselves in that ridiculous way, is because of the absurd restrictions as to costume im posed by the Emancipation Act. Civic functionaries and Government officials of all grades should have the same liberty to carry their uniforms and insignia into Roman Catholic places of worship as into Protestant places of worship. There can be no more invidious distinction than that which the law creates, when it makes conspicuous to the eye of the multitude, by colours and costume, privileges accorded to one class of Her Majesty’s subjects and denied to another. With such gratuitous insults to their Church, the Roman Catholics can never believe that they live under a Govern ment conducted on the principle of equal justice to all the Queen’s subjects.
From a careful return made by the clergy of the diocese
458 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
during the year 1864, it appears that from 1800 to 1864, the following increase has taken place : —
In the number of churches, ...... 93
In the number of secular clergy, . . . 18
In the number of seminaries and schools, not National, . 17
In the number of convents, ...... 7
And from the same return, it appears that, between 1800 and 1864, the
Cost of churches, new and improved, has been £203,857 1G 4
Cost of convents, 43,334 0 0
Cost of seminaries and schools, . . . 10,000 0 0
Total, . =£257,191 16 4
The parochial schools, which are not taken into account in the above return, are numerous, and, though most of them receive grants of salary from the National Board, have been almost entirely built at the expense of the Catholic people of the diocese.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 459
CHAPTER XXII.
THE Rev. Dr. Reeves, a very learned ecclesiastical antiquary, observes, that the diocese of Down in its present state is a “ collection of smaller sees, which have Leon reduced to the condition of parishes, and of districts, which in primitive times were not assigned to any diocese.” The same remark applies to Connor, and to most of the larger dioceses of Ireland. He also observes, that 111 primitive times there were bishops in two churches in the immediate neighbour hood of Downpatrick. It is surprising that Archdeacon Cotton, and other episcopal writers, do not draw from facts like these the obvious and necessary conclusion, that in those early ages the churches, by whomsoever founded, were really nothing more than what we should now call parish churches, each in the midst of a certain district, the inhabit ants of which composed the congregation, and that the congregations were perfectly independent of one another. The modern “ diocese,” with its prelate ruling over other pastors, was a thing of much later origin, and was in fact the result of a series of usurpations, by which the weaker churches were brought into subjection for the aggrandisement of one minister, who became a “lord” over God’s heritage. There is no fact in ecclesiastical history more clearly estab lished than this. The usurper in this case, however, seems to have been an abbat. Archdeacon Cotton remarks, that “ but few particulars can now be ascertained concerning the early prelates of Down, who appear to have been abbats of the convent of St. Patrick.” So much for the episcopal succession in a place which is supposed to have been specially honoured by the presence of the national saint. However, it appears that in the course of time the two dioceses of Downpatrick and Connor were united. They were separated in the twelfth century, in which state they remained till 1441, when they were again united by the Pope’s authority,
460 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
with the assent of the King. In 1609. James I. made the church of Downpatrick the cathedral of the diocese ; but in 1662, Charles II., being informed that it had fallen into ruin, and that it was inconveniently -situated in a remote part of the diocese, constituted the parish church of Lisburn, alias Lisnegarvie, the cathedral church of the united diocese of Down and Connor, and such it remains till the present day. The building is not at all worthy of the diocese now, and the Bishop proposes to erect a new one. The same reason that influenced the Kins: in transferring the see from Down-
o O
patrick to Lisburn should influence the Queen in transferring it from Lisburn to Belfast. The superstitious veneration for antiquity with regard to ecclesiastical sites in the present day leads to the greatest possible absurdities, inconvenience, and waste of resources. Roman Catholics might be excused for having much more of that feeling than Protestants ; but they have the good sense to imitate their ancestors, and transfer the head-quarters of their Church to the great- centres of population and social influence. It is to be hoped that the present Bishop of Down and Connor, who possesses a practical turn of mind, and the spirit of a true reformer, will see the propriety of erecting his new cathedral in Belfast, and make it worthy of the capital of Ulster.
There is not much that is noteworthy in the succession of bishops till we come to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when we not unnaturally find that Scotch divines found their way to the bishopric of this Scottish colony. John Todd, a Jesuit, who professed to be a convert, became Bishop of Down and Connor in 1601, and was allowed to hold Dromore also in commendam ; but having been called to account for some malpractices, he resigned his bishopric, and left the kingdom. James Dundas, a Scotchman, was appointed in 1612. He behaved as dishonestly in his dealings with the Church property as his Jesuit predecessor. But luckily for his see he lived only one year after his consecra tion. Robert Echlin, another Scotchman, succeeded in 1635. He was followed by Henry Leslie, born of a noble Scotch family — a great loyalist, a man of piety, and an author of
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 461
ability. But he and most of those who followed were eclipsed by the fame of the next bishop, the celebrated Jeremy Taylor, a native of Cambridge, to whose administra tion of this diocese reference has been already made. The bishops who came in regular succession after him were Roger Boyle, Thomas Hackett, an Englishman ; Samuel Foley, Edward Walking-ton, Edward Smith, Francis Huchinson, an Englishman ; Carew Reynell, another Englishman ; John Ryder, John Whitcombe, Robert Dowries, Arthur Smith, James Traill, a Scotchman ; William Dixon, an Englishman ; Nathaniel Alexander, translated from Killaloe, and Richard Mant, also translated from Killaloe. He was an Englishman — able and conscientious ; a man of indefatigable industry, and a voluminous author. He gave to Archdeacon Cotton a list of his published works, which numbered no less than eighty-one; the most important of which is his “History of the Church of Ireland,” from the Reformation to the Union. It is an elaborate defence of the Establishment. Bishop Mant was true to his order ; but had all the Englishmen who obtained bishoprics in this country been as zealous and honest as he, its history need not assume the form of an apology.
Dr. Mant was succeeded in 1849 by Dr. Robert Knox, son of the Hon. Charles Knox, Archdeacon of Armagh, and nephew of the first Earl of Ranfurley. Bishop Knox rules over the united dioceses of Down, Connor, and Dromore. Down and Connor contain nearly the whole of the great Protestant counties of Down and Antrim, and a small portion of the county of Londonderry, embracing an area of 1,141,462 statute acres. Dromore contains part of the county of Down, and some portions of the counties of Armagh and Antrim, having an area of 288,512 statute acres. Each diocese has its staff of dignitaries, as if the three cathedrals were still existing in all their glory. The net value of the bishopric is £3,524. The number of benefices in Down is 38 ; perpetual cures, 10 ; total, 48. The net income of the clergy is £10,688. In Connor, the number of benefices is 53; perpetual cures, 23; total, 76. The net income of the
462 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
clergy is £13,682. Dromore contains 24 benefices and 4 perpetual cures ; total 28. The net income of the clergy is £8,292.
Lisburn, in which the cathedral is situated, is a consider able town about seven miles from Belfast. It is a Parlia mentary borough, the members for which have been virtually returned by the Marquis of Hertford, its principal proprietor. The cathedral has no architectural pretensions, presenting the appearance of a good commodious parish church. The population in 1801 was 9,053. Connor, which gives its name to one of the dioceses, is a mere village in the county of Antrim, near the prosperous town of Ballymena. The dignitaries have livings in various parts of the diocese. Dromore is situated in the county of Down, about fourteen miles south of Belfast. It was once a place of some import ance, having a cathedral and an episcopal residence, which were destroyed by the rebels in 104-1. The present cathedral was built by Bi.shr.p Jeremy Taylor. The population in 1801 was 2,531. It is very absurd then to retain the titles of these in significant places when there is in the centre of the united diocese the great town of Belfast, the flourishing capital of Ulster, containing a population of more than 120,000, inhabiting about 20,000 houses, increasing at the rate of about 1,500 new houses annually.
Belfast presents one of the most glaring illustrations of the absurdity of the present parochial system. It is situated in the parish of Shan kill, which extends over an area of nearly 20,000 acres, and contains a population of 120,000. The legal pastor of this vast multitude is Dr. Miller, whose net income is only £288. He is vicar of the parish, the presentation to which he purchased, the patron being the Marquis of Donegal. The reader should reflect upon those facts and figures. The principal clergyman connected with the Established Church in a city second in importance only to the metropolis of the kingdom, is a gentleman who came there a total stranger, with no pretensions whatever on the ground of talent, or learning, or eloquence, or service rendered to the Church — perhaps inferior in these respects
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 463
to nine-tenths of the curates in the diocese — yet having a legal right to take charge of the whole population, because he happened to purchase the presentation from a layman ! St. Anne’s is the name of the parish church. It is a large and convenient building, with accommodation for about 1,200. Of course it was impossible that it could supply the wants of the Church population of the parish, which amounts to 5,420. There are twelve other churches — Christ Church, Magdalene Asylum, Mariner’s Chapel, St. George’s, St. John’s, St. Mark’s, St. Matthew’s, St. Paul’s, Trinity Church, Lower Falls, Upper Falls, and White- rock. Of these nine are perpetual cures, and the Vicar of Belfast is patron of no less than eight of those benefices ; so that by the investment of a sum of money in Church property in the year 1847, a young minister, who other wise might never have been anything more than a poor curate, has been, able to constitute himself a little bishop in the great and enlightened town of Belfast, which used to be called the modern Athens. I remember reading a public notice relating to a vestry, in the handwriting of the Vicar, not many years after his induction, which was so glaringly ungrainmatical as to provoke the criticism of the press. The “ Irish Church Directory “ gives no date for the ordina tion of Dr. Miller. He was admitted to the diocese in 1841, and inducted to the benefice in 1847, so that he is now twenty years in possession. He is, I believe, an Orange chaplain, and he has always given his countenance and co-operation to Orange demonstrations, readily opening his pulpit to preachers distinguished for the inflammatory style of their attacks on the Roman Catholic Church, and doing this sometimes in defiance of episcopal authority. The state of things, therefore, which allowed a man of such a mental calibre to be the chief minister of Belfast for so many years, is one that must be deplored by every friend of Christian civilization in Ireland. How different might have been the social and religious spirit of the Protestants of Belfast, if the enlightened and tolerant bishop of the diocese had had the appointment of the Vicar of St. Anne’s, or if it were in the
464 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
gift of some responsible body. Then, in all probability, Belfast would never have been disgraced by the religious wars, in which Protestants and Roman Catholics fought in its streets day after day, like two savage tribes, burning and wrecking, not only the dwellings of their opponents, but even school-houses and places of worship. The total number of members of the Church of England in the diocese of Down, according to the Census Commissioners, is 28,808 ; but the total number of Protestant Dissenters — chiefly Pres byterians — is 88,010, or more than three to one. In the diocese of Connor the total number of Established Church members is 80,125 ; but the total number of Protestant Dissenters is 202,381, or nearly three to one. In the diocese of Dromore the total number of Church members is 44,474 ; but the Protestant Dissenters number 01,004.* The total Church population in the three united dioceses is 153,287 ; the total number of Protestant Nonconformists is 352,595.
The Venerable Thomas Hincks, Archdeacon of Connor, has mastered the subject of Irish ecclesiastical statistics better than anyone I know ; and he has favoured me with a series of tables displaying the anomalies of the Establishment with reference to the distribution of its revenues, which are exceedingly valuable and instructive. In 1093 there were few churches in either Down or Connor in possession of the glebe lands belonging to them, although the right to them is apparent by the inquisition, and the several records of the diocese. Archdeacon Matthews, of Connor, states that the want of glebe lands and manse houses excuses many of the clergy of the said diocese from residence on their respective livings, whereby divine service, hospitality, and relief of the poor have been neglected, and this is one occasion of the general nonconformity. The incumbents of several churches avoid suits for the recovery of their glebes and other eccle siastical rights, lest they should be called litigious, or disoblige their patrons and great parishioners, or hazard their own money in lawsuits. He adds — “ The inhabitants of these dioceses are generally Dissenters from the * Stacpoole’s Returns, p. 119.
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS.
465
Established Church, and will not accept the office of church- warden, whereby the churches go out of repair and the decayed ones are not repaired.
In 1768 a return was made to the House of Lords, in which this passage occurs : — “ Singinton Church (now Ballyrashane) ruinous. The parishioners, who are mostly Dissenters, refused to contribute to its repair, and suffered it to fall.”* Other similar cases.
In reference to the diocese of Connor, the Archdeacon says : — “ There are 8 ecclesiastical denominations in the above diocese, which I have examined into, and in contrast with which I have selected 42 benefices out of two southern dioceses. The result of my investigations is as follows : —
No.
Specification of Particulars.
In 8 Denomina tions of Connor.
In 42 Benefices in 2 Southern Dioceses.
]
Total population amounts to
11,163
47,657
9
Number of members of Established
1,304
559
3
Average population of each,
1,395-3
1,1347
4
Average number of members of Es
tablished Church, ....
163
13-3
5
Per-centage of \ Established Church,
117
1-2
population, ) Dissenters,
88-3
98-8
6
Net income of the whole, .
nil.
£6,595 ]5s.
7
Average net income to each,
nil.
£157
It thus appears, that the proportion of the 42 benefices is above four times the population of the 8 denominations. That the members of the Established Church in the 8 de nominations are more than double the members of the Established Church in the 42 benefices ; that the average population of the 8 denominations exceeds the average population of the 42 benefices ; that the average members of the Established Church in the 8 denominations is more than twelve times the average of the same in the 42 benefices; that the per-ceiitage of members of the Established Church
* The parish of Ballyrashane has now a neat parish church, in good order, a comfortable glebe-house, and resident incumbent, and the parish con tained at last census 143 members of the Established Church’.
2 H
466 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
in the 42 benefices is only 1-2, whereas in the 8 denomi nations it is 11 “8 ; and that the net income of the 42 benefices is £6,596, giving an. average of £157 to each benefice, whilst there is -no income whatever attached to any of the 8 denominations ; nor is there any provision made by payment for the cure of souls therein. The duty is per formed by the incumbents of adjoining benefices, to which by long usage the several denominations have become nomi nally attached. The Marquis of Donegall is the patron of 8 of the livings in the united diocese, the Marquis of Hert ford of 5, the Marquis of Londonderry of ~. Among the other lay patrons are, Lord Bangor and Mr. R. E. Ward, Lord Annesley, Lord Downshire, Lord Carriole, Mr. Bristow, Mr. Hugh Bagot, the Irish Society, Lord Massereene, and Lord Momitcashell. The Crown appoints to twelve or fourteen.
The Deputy-Registrar of Down and Connor appends some remarks to his returns, ordered by of Commons
in 1864. He states, that there are 118 livings in Down and Connor, including perpetual curacies, district parochial charges, and ohapclries, impropriate curacies, &:c., and there is not any parish in the diocese, that he is aware of. that has not a church within it used for divine service.
There is a curious anomaly remaining, like a fossil, in the exempt jurisdiction of Xewry and Mourne. There is actually a lord abbot still in the Irish Establishment. The person age who enjoys this unique dignity is the Earl of Kilmorey. The office, like thosj of the old Irish Church, is hereditary, and may be enjoyed by a minor. But, like the lay abbots of old, the Lord Abbot of Newry and Mourne has a clergy man to discharge the spiritual part of the duties. The divine who does this at present is an eminent one, the Very Rev. Daniel Bagot, Dean of Dromore, who distinguished himself many years ago in a public discussion on the Trinity with a Unitarian clergyman of great ability, the Rev. John Scott Porter, of Belfast, The full title of Dean Bagot, as given in Thorn’s Almanac, is, “ Official-Principal, Vicar- General, and Commissary-General,” which is certainly long- enough, and grand enough for the extent of the exempt
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 467
jurisdiction. The abbacy, within whose privileged bounds no bishop dares intrude, unless the official-principal, vicar- general, and commissary-general should get the loan of one occasionally to confirm the children, contains 4 benefices, with a total population of 21,760.
In the Roman Catholic diocese of Down and Connor there are 50 parish priests, and 33 curates — total 83; who officiate in 9-1 churches and chapels. There are 3 convents, with 18 members in community. There is a diocesan seminary at Belfast, and the Christian Brothers have a large superior school. Dr. Denvir succeeded Dr. Crolly as bishop of this diocese, and shared his liberal sentiments on the question of education. He was one of the Commissioners of the Na tional Board for many years, till an interdict from the Pope compelled him to resign. Dr. Dorrian was appointed his coadjutor in I860, the Ultramontane party, headed by Dr. Cullen, seeming to think that able and enlightened prelate was not up to the mark. He was altogether superseded in 1865, when he resigned. The number of Roman Catholics in the diocese of Down in 1834 was 58,484; in 1861 it was only 46,451. The Roman Catholics in Connor in 1834 were 95,545; in 1861 they were 103.245. In Dromore the Roman Catholic population in 1834 was 76,275 ; in 1861 it was reduced to 66,1 36. Total number of Roman Catholics in the three dioceses, 215,832, which exceeds the Church population within the same bounds by 62,545. The Roman Catholic diocese of Dromore is comparatively small. The number of parish priests is 17, and of curates 21 — total 38; who officiate in 39 chapels. There are 4 nunneries, 5 Christian Brothers’ schools, and one seminary. The bishop is the Most Rev. Dr. Leahy. Neither the conventual nor the monastic system seems to nourish in the Black North. The climate is too cold.
2 H 2
468 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE Maiden City cannot boast much of its episcopal line. It Avoulcl puzzle even the Rev. Dr. Lee to connect it with any apostle. Archdeacon Cotton was unable to trace it farther back than 1158, when some council of bishops or other “decreed” that an episcopal see should be erected at Deny, and one prelate appears to have borne that title ; but it is probable that after his death the district of Deny reverted to the bishopric of Tyrconnell, or Raphoe, to which it had formerly belonged, and we do not find a regular succession of bishops of Deny till the year 1279. “Abbuts of Deny” were, however, spoken of earlier by the Irish annalists, but they were probably such abbots as Francis- Jack, Earl of Kilmorey. The cathedral of Deny, so called, was erected in 163-S by the London Corporation, which had obtained grants of the town and large tracts of land in the neighbourhood, being represented by the body called the Irish Society. But what the see of Deny wanted in antiquity it possessed in territory, and it became, next to Armagh, the wealthiest in Ireland. One of its earliest bishops alter the supremacy of England had been completely established in Ulster was George Montgomery, a younger brother of Viscount Montgomery, of the Scottish house of Eglinton. In order tt> make up a decent living for a gentleman so connected, the three sees of Deny, Raphoe, and Clogher were given to him together, because they had been sadly wasted and impoverished during the civil war with Tyrone. In five years, however, he removed to the see of Meath, retaining Clogher. He drew up a minute account of the three sees, which has been preserved in the British Museum, and is printed in the Ordnance Survey of Londonderry. The next six bishops of Deny in succession were Englishmen — Babington, Hampton, Tanner, Downham, Bramhall. Bishop
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 4(j<)
Bramhall having been robbed and ill-treated in the rebellion of 1641, left the country, and remained on the Continent till the Restoration, when Charles II. rewarded him for his suffering by making him Archbishop of Armagh. The next Bishop of Deny was Dr. Wilde, an Englishman, of whom it is recorded that he was a great wit in the University. Pass ing over three more — Mosson, Ward, arid Hopkins, we come to the great name of William King, who afterwards became Archbishop of Dublin in 1702. While “sitting” at Deny, says Cotton, “ he contributed largely to the building and repairing of churches within his diocese ; was a benefactor to the see ; founded a library at Deny for the use of the clergy and gentlemen of the diocese ; and by his will, dated in 1726, bequeathed to it a large and valuable collection of books, which he had purchased from the study of his prede cessor, Bishop Hopkins. The next Bishop, Hickman, a native of England, left behind him a great many published sermons, and something for the poor of Deny. Harstonge, Ash, Nicolson, Downes, Rimdle, Reynell, Stone, and Barnard, were consecrated or translated to this see in rapid succession, till the reader of its history is arrested by the brilliant career of Frederick Augustus Hervey, fourth Earl of Bristol. He was a man of great talents, and refined taste, a most munificent patron of the fine arts, and of all works tending to promote the public good. He erected a spire on his cathedral, and gave a thousand pounds towards the building of the Deny bridge across the Foyle, which continued to sustain the traffic between the city and the county of Londonderry till it gave place to a magnificent iron structure a few years ago. The Right Rev. Earl joined enthusiastically in the movement of the Volunteers in 1782, and one of the most inspiriting sights to the natives in Dublin in that time of national excitement was the appearance of the Bishop of Deny, albeit an English peer, dashing through College-green, with his splendidly caparisoned carriage and four, to declare that Ireland was an independent kingdom, and could be bound only by laws made in her own Parliament, though acknowledging the English sovereign as her king; taking
470 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
nearly the same ground as Hungary takes with reference to the Emperor of Austria. But that glorious day-dream of independent nationality was soon dissipated by the suppres sion of the Volunteers, the Rebellion of 1798. and the Union between Great Britain and Ireland. The noble Bishop of Deny, who seemed to have been thoroughly disgusted with the course of events, retired to the Continent, where he lived for twenty years. He died at Albano, in Italy, in 1803, in the seventy -fifth year of his age, “having presided over this diocese five and thirty years.” Such is the record ; but we are not told how a bishop residing twenty years on the
1 *.’ «/
Continent could manage to preside qvcr an Irish see. There is, however, truth in the inscription on his monument in the church of Ickworth, Suffolk, when it states that lie endeared himself to all denominations of Christians in his diocese, and that hostile sects, which Lad long entertained feelings of deep animosity towards each other, were gradually sof tened and reconciled by his influence and example.
He was succeeded by the son of a peer, the Hon. William Knox, who was translated from Killaloe. This was a most useful prelate, a generous and active patron of all the bene volent institutions in the city, and was held in the greatest esteem by all classes, during the twenty-seven years that he ruled the diocese. He died in London in 1881. He was succeeded by the Hon. Richard Pon.sonby, also translated from Killaloe. On the death of Bishop Bisset, in ] 834, the diocese of Raphoe was annexed to Deny under the Church Temporalities Act.
The present bishop is Dr. Hio-gin, a native of Lancashire, and a graduate of Cambridge University. He became Dean of Limerick in 1844, having been Vicar-General of Killaloe since 1828. He was consecrated Bishop of Limerick in 1849, and translated to Deny in 1853; so that he has now occupied the see for thirteen years. The diocese of Deny includes nearly the whole ot the county of Londonderry, about half the county of Tyrone, and some part of the county of Donegal. The area is more than a million statute acres. The diocese of Raphoe, which is united to Deny,
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 471
includes the greater part of the county of Donegal. The number of livings in Deny, including perpetual and district cures, is 70, and in Raphoe 41. There are besides over GO curates in the united diocese. The bishop is patron of 51 livings. The gross income of the see at present is £13,028, net £5,500.
The population of the diocese of Deny in 1831 was 355,566 ; aiidthe net episcopal re venue then exceeded £12,000. The Dean held the benefices of Templemore, Glendermot, and Faughan Yale, yielding an income of £3,710 ; and there were some other livings in the diocese of nearly £1,400 each. In 1834, the population, of the diocese of Deny consisted of 50,350 members of the Established Church, 1 18,339 Pres byterians, 1,738 other Protestant Dissenters, and 196,614 Roman Catholics. It thus appears that, as compared with the members of the Established Church in this Protestant diocese, the Presbyterians were more than two to one, and the Roman Catholics nearly forr to one. There were two benefices containing each not more than 100 Church mem bers, three not more than 200, fourteen not more than 500, twenty-two not more than 1,000, twelve not more than 2,000, and four not more than 5,000.
The population of Raphoe, in 1834, comprised 33,507 members of the Church, 28,914 Presbyterians, and 145,385 Roman Catholics, so that the Roman Catholics were nearly three times as numerous as the Protestants of all denomi nations. In 18 i2 tho Catholic Directory contained the following :— “ Although twenty years ago, at the time of the present bishop’s appointment, there were only twenty-three priests in the entire diocese, there are now fifty on active duty and work for ten more.” In the Catholic Directory for the present year the statistics of this diocese show a total of fifty-two secular clergy officiating in forty-four churches and chapels. There is a diocesan seminary at Lctterkenny for ecclesiastical students. By the Census of 1861, the total population of Raphoe was 169,204, of which 75 per cent, were Catholics, the respective numbers being, Established Church, 22,213; Presbyterians, 1,751; other denominations,
472 IRELAND AND HK:I CHURCHES.
2,599 ; Roman Catholics, 126,991. In Deny the number of Roman Catholic priests is ninety-seven, officiating in seventy- four chapels and churches and three nunneries. There is a new model school in Deny, admirably conducted, to which the Roman Catholic clergy are, unfortunately, opposed. The episcopal palace is situated in Bishop-street, near Bishop’ s- gate, with gardens of nearly two acres, extending from the palace to the city Avail. The Bishop has also an extensive domain near the town, but the ground is let for agricultural purposes. The palace is a substantial commodious building, with no pretensions to architectural beauty. It occupies the site of an old manse, which was built on the ground of an Augustinian convent. The deanery, a large brick house, is situated at the other side of the same street, which is near the cathedral.
The palace of Raphoe is a very beautiful residence, stand ing in the midst of a large park, and commanding an extensive view of a finely diversified and well cultivated country. The town itself, which is only about twelve miles south-west of Londonderry, is small, but neat and comfortable, containing a population of 1 ,300 or 1 ,400. It ought to have been a famous place for education; for Charles I. founded a free school there, and endowed it with 2,305 acres of arable and pasture land, and nearly 9,000 acres of mountain and bog. It has other educational foundations of considerable value. But unfortunately the bishops and clergy of the Established Church, whom the State intrusted with the exclusive ad ministration and control of all such endowments, sadly neglected their duty, and it would be difficult to find in any country a more humiliating and damaging record of abuse and neglect than in the Report of the Endowed Schools Commission. The dignitaries of these two dioceses are well provided for.
There are some excellent benefices in the diocese of Deny. The Rev. Dr. MTvor enjoys a college living, with a net income of £909, which he received in 1847, three years after his ordination. The Rev. James Byrne, Dean of Clonfert, has another college living, with a gross income of £1,400 —
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS,
net, £799 ; he got this one year after his ordination, in 1849. Like Dr. M’lvor, his first entrance into the diocese was to be installed, and put in possession of this splendid endowment. Clonleigh lias a gross income of £1,008, and £750 net ; this is in the gift of the Bishop, and he bestowed it upon his son-in-law, the Rev. William M. Edwards, six years after he came into the diocese. The rector of Upper Cumber has «£76() a year, which is also in the gift of the Bishop. The Marquis of Abercom is the patron of Dun- agheady, with a gross income of £1,027; net, £988; the Rev. G. J. Thomas, A.r.., is the lucky owner of this benefice. Donaghmore, with an income of £1,650 gross, and £1,010 net, is in the gift of the Irvinge family, and the Rev. John Irvinge enjoys it. There are many other rich livings in this diocese, and Raphoe has a fair share. But they are not nearly as valuable as they ought to be, considering the enormous extent of glebe lands with which they arc endowed. When those lands were first given Ulster was wild and uncultivated, and land that then paid only one shilling an acre would let IIOWT for twenty ; and had the estates of the Church in Ulster been honestly and properly managed, the rental would go far to support the whole Established clergy in Ireland. For example, Aghadoe rectory has 523 statute acres; Upper Badoney, 910; Ballynascreen, 847;Banagher, 400: Camus-juxta-Mourne, 012; Cappa, 1,57-3; Clonleigh, 722 : Clonmany, 742 ; Upper Cumber, 1,203 ; Donaghcady, 1,662 ; Donaghmore, 1,000 ; Drumragh, 904 ; Durigiven, 655 ; Lower Langfield, 2,601 ; Mara, 907; Tam- laght O’Crilly, Upper, 933. In. Raphoe the benefice of Conwall has 1,149 acres ; Drumholm, 742 ; Kilcar, 1,380 ; Killaghtee, 719; Killybegs, 2,591; Kiilymard, 640; Raymunterdoiiy, 2,300; Templecroiie, 1,200; and Tully aguish, 1,214.
A volume of essays on the Irish Church was published last year, as the joint production of four clergymen, all but one connected with this united diocese, the Rev. James Byrne, rector of Cappa, and examining chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Deny ; the Rev. Arthur W. Edwards, rector of Tamlao-ht Finlagan, and examining chaplain to the Lord
474 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Bishop of Deny ; the Rev. William Anderson, rector of Ray- munterdony ; and the Rev. Arthur T. Lee, LL.D., rector of Aghohill. The Bishop, in his late charge, praised this book very highly, which was quite natural, as two of the authors were his examining chaplains, and one of them his son-in-law. All these essayists happen to be remarkably well placed in the Church. Dcaii Byrne has got 1,573 acres of glebe land, with £ 1,715 stipend, producing £1,400 gross, and £800 net. The Rev. Mr. Edwards has got 248 acres, with £750 stipend, producing £972 gross, £535 net. The Rev. Mr. Anderson has 2,300 acres, with £77 stipend, amounting to £357 gross, and £281 net — a small result from such a large endowment. Dr. Lee has 17(> acres, and £309 stipend, yielding a gross income of £515, net, £399. This living h in. the gift of the Crown. Mr. Lee, an Englishman, received it in 1858, the date of his first appearance in the diocese, there being nothing in the Irish Church Directory about either his ordination or admission to the diocese. This is the more remarkable as he has taken for his subject the statistics of the Irish Church, which is his forte ; besides, Dr. Lee may be yet himself a bishop — indeed his friends put him forward lately as a can didate for the see of Meath. In that case he ought to take care that no future Cotton, Brady, or Lee, should be in doubt about the ordination of so distinguished a champion of episcopal succession.
Dr. Lee has been exceedingly active in organizing plans for the defence of the Establishment ; and I have already noticed, more than once, the zeal and ability he has shown in trying to prove that the Established Church bishops are the successors of St. Patrick, and the lawful heirs of all the Celtic Church property.
This volume of essays is written with considerable ability and exemplary moderation, but I should greatly prefer having a volume of essays on the Irish Church written by half a dozen curates of twenty-five years standing in the dio cese of Deny, containing a faithful record of their experience of the manner in which Church patronage has been dispensed in their day and generation, and giving their reason for the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 475
fact that two clergymen, named Edwards, were promoted over their heads in the year 18GO, to two of the best livings in the diocese, both in the gift of the Bishop, although one of those clergymen did not enter the diocese till 185-1, and the other till 1855. It is those hard working curates, worn out with ill-requited toil, not the pets of the palace, that are entitled to a respectful heaving on the subject of Irish Church reform. The life of a Saxon priest in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, if honestly written, would be more precious to the ecclesiastical historian than a thousand volumes composed by the well-beneficed and aspiring chap lains of Norman prelates.
The see of Kilmore, says Archdeacon Cotton, so far as we are able to trace by our records, is one of the least ancient in Ireland. In the year 1454 the Bishop, Andrew M’Brady, by consent of the Pope, removed his see to a more conve nient spot at Kilmore, created his church into a cathedral, and placed in it thirteen circular canons. All these have disappeared. Of the former chapter there now only remain a dean, who is Rector of Kilmore, and an archdeacon, “ who has no corps or prebend, but his dignity is ambulatory, and may be conferred on any incumbent at the bishop’s will.” In pre-Reformatioii times the family of Brady, or M’Brady, seem to have enjoyed this see as a sort of inheritance. During the fifteenth century it was occupied by five bishops of this name. From the year 1589 to l(K)o it was held in commendam by Edward Edgeworth, a Prebendary of Christ Church and St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in consequence of the wars which then prevailed in Ulster. In that year the bishopric was bestowed on Robert Draper, Rector of Trim, the best parsonage in all the kingdom, which he was allowed to hold in commendam. Thomas Moyne followed, and after him, in the year 1629, Bishop Bedell, one of the most illustrious men that ever sat on the Irish bench. He was born at Black-Notley, Essex, in 1570. Sir Henry Wotton, English ambassador at Venice, took young Bedell with him as his chaplain, because he had heard very singular commen dation of his good gifts and discreet behaviour. At Venice
476 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
Bedell became the intimate friend of Father Paul Sarpi, the celebrated author of the “ History of the Council of Trent,” and also with another learned divine, Ant. de Dominis, Archbishop of Spolatta. Having spent eight years in that city, Bedell returned to England, where he got married to a widow, “ a person comely, virtuous, and godly.” Having obtained the living of Harmingsheath, he conscientiously refused to pay the enormous induction fees charged by the Bishop of Norwich, preferring to go without the living ; but the Bishop sent for him in a few days, and consented to induct him without simoniac extortion. The reputation of a clergyman so learned and so good could net be unknown to his great contemporary, Archbishop Usslier, through whose influence the Fellows of Trinity College invited him, in 1626, to fill the vacant office of provost, and forwarded an address to the King, entreating him to lay his commands on Bedell to accept of the situation. Sir Henry Wotton also wrote to His Majesty, praying that he would make “ Mr. William Bedell governor of his college at Dublin, for the good of that society.” The King complied with the request. Bedell accepted the post, and, as usual with him, he immedi ately set about correcting abuses, establishing new regula tions, catechizing, lecturing, and preaching, labouring in every way to inspire the students with earnest convictions of duty. In about two years the King promoted him to the see of Kilmore and Ardagh, having been informed, His Majesty said, “that by his care and good government there had been wrought great reformation in the principal nurserv of religion and learning in that his realm.” The picture which Bishop Bedell presented of the state in which he found the dioceses is very instructive. In a report to Arch bishop Laud, written by his request, he stated that the cathedral church of Ardagh, with the bishop’s house, was down to the ground. The parish churches were all in a manner ruined and unroofed. “ The people, saving a few British planters here and there, which are not the tenth part of the population, obstinate recusants. The Popish clergy, more numerous by far than we, in full exercise of all
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 477
liction ecclesiastical by their vicar-general and officials, who are so confident as they excommunicate those that come to our courts, even in matrimonial causes ; every parish hath its priest, and some two or three apiece, and so their Mass-houses also ; in some places Mass is said in the churches. Fryers there are in divers places, who go about, though not in their habit, and by their importunate begging impoverish the people, who, indeed, are generally very poor, as from that cause so from their paving double tithes to their own clergy and ours, from the dearth of corn, and the death of cattle these late years, with their contributions to their soldiers and their agents, and which forget not to reckon among other causes the oppression of the court ecclesias tical, which, in very truth, my lord, I cannot excuse, and do seek to reform.” He goes on to state that the ministers of the Establishment were Englishmen, not having “ the tongue of the people, who held, many of them, two or three, four, or more vicarages apiece ;” and he concludes saying “ His Majesty is now with the greatest part of this country, as to their hearts and consciences, king, but at the Pope’s dis cretion.”
Notwithstanding the poverty of the sees, Bishop Bedell’s conscience would not allow him to hold two, such was his abhorrence of pluralities, and so lie made over Ardagh to another, Dr. Richardson, without any consideration what ever. The Bishop knew that the native mind must be reached in the Irish language, or not at all. He therefore set up an Irish printing press, at which he printed some homilies for circulation among the people. His chaplain wrote—” I have seen many of them express as much joy at the reading of a psalm, or of a chapter in the New Testa ment in the Irish tongue, as was discovered by the people of the Captivity when Ezra read the Law unto them.”
The Bishop’s charity and hospitality were unbounded. Many poor cottagers were supplied with food from his kitchen, and at Christmas he was in the habit of collecting his parishioners around him and letting them sit at his own table. The force of goodness in such a character conquered
478 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
national animosity, religious bigotry, and even tlie fury of a population excited by the atrocities of a, most sanguinary civil war. “ There seems,” says Bishop Burriet, “to be a secret guard set about Iris house ; for though there was nothing but lire, blood, and desolation about him, yet the Irish were so restrained, as by some hidden power, that they did him no harm for many weeks.” He was the only Englishman in the whole county of Cavan that was suffered to live in his own house without disturbance. Not only his owrn house but the outbuildings, the church and churchyard, were full of terror-stricken people, the families of the gentry, who had iled to him for refuge, and with whom he shared, all he possessed, though at last lie could give them nothing but straw to lie upon, and some boiled wheat to support nature. He continued to preach to the people around him from week to week. Dr. Swiney, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kil- more. fearm;.;1 that the passions of the insurgent multitude might become uncontrollable, offered to come and reside at Kilmore for the protection of the Protestant bishop and his people.
This friendly offer was courteously declined in a letter indorsed, “ To my reverend and loving brother, D. Swiney.” It was the last letter Bishop Bedell ever wrote. It is deeply interesting. He began by thanking Dr. Swiney for his civility, but observed that his house was small, that there were a great number of miserable people of all ranks, ages, and of both sexes, who had iled thither as to a sanctuary, and that some of them were sick, especially his own son. But above all there was the difference of religious worship. His people comforted themselves in their affliction with reading the Scriptures, and offering up daily prayers in the vulgar tongue, and with singing of psalms. He concluded thus : — “ These things would offend your company if not yourself; nor could others be hindered who would pretend that they came to see you, if you were among us, and under that cover those murderers would break in upon us, who, after they had robbed us of all that belonged to us, would in conclusion think they did God good service by our
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 479
slaughter. For my own part I am resolved to trust in the Divine protection. To a Christian and a bishop that is now almost seventy, no death for the cause of Christ can be bitter ; on the contrary, nothing can be more desirable. And though I ask nothing for myself alone, yet if you will require the people, under an. anathema, not to do any other acts of violence to those whom they have so often beaten, spoilt, and stript, it will be both acceptable to God, honour able to yourself, and happy to the people if they obey you ; but if not, consider tliat God will remember all that is now done. To whom, reverend brother, I do heartily commend you. Yours in Christ, Will: Kilmorc.”
This state of things lasted from the 23rd of October till the 18th of December, when he received a command from the rebels to send away the refugees whom lie had sheltered. They expressed the greatest regret at being tlius obliged to comply with the strict orders of the council at Kilkenny. To this he replied, “ Here I am ; the Lord do unto me as it seemeth good unto Him. The will of the Lord be done.” He was then seized, with his two sons and Mr. Clogy, his chaplain, and conveyed to the ruined castle of Loughoughter, situated in a lake with only about a foot of dry land around the only remaining tower. The Bishop, now seventy years of age, was allowed to go on horseback. The rest of the prisoners proceeded on foot, and were put in chains in this dismal prison. They were, however, supplied with pro visions, and the charity of the rebels allowed the good Bishop bread and wine for the Communion on Christmas Day. Bishop Swiney, meantime, had taken possession of Bedell’s remaining property, feasted in his palace, and celebrated Mass in his cathedral, he and his followers believing that they had seen the last of the heretics. In an exchange of prisoners the Bishop and his companions were released, but they would not allow him to leave the county, and he spent the remainder of his days with an Irish clergyman, Denis Sheridan, who, though a convert, and married to an English woman, was esteemed and protected by the people, even in those troubled times, on account of his honesty and benevo-
480 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
lence. The Bishop died on the 7th of February, having con tinued his ministry to the last. He was buried next his wife in the ground attached to his cathedral. Bishop Swiney, Avho was in possession, demurred, but he was over ruled by the rebel chief, who mustered his forces, and fol lowed the coffin to the grave, over which they fired a volley in honour of his memory, having insisted that his chaplain should perform a funeral service in his own way. Some of the Irish present, perhaps a priest, exclaimed — “ Mequiescat in i>;«‘c ulilinus Anglo rum.”
1 have given these details of the life and death of Bedell for the reason assigned by his biographer, Bishop Burnet, a reason which applies with tenfold force in Ireland: — “Thus lived and died this excellent bishop, in whom so many of the greatest characters of a primitive and apostolic bishop did show themselves so eminently, that it seemed fit that lie should still speak to the world though dead.” He left behind him a number of learned works, and others intended for popular usefulness, including an Irish catechism and an Irish version of the Old Testament. Archdeacon Cotton was laudably anxious that justice should be done to the memory of this great man by the production of a life worthy of his character, his labours, and his sufferings. .Many years ago the venerable author whom I have so often quoted designed to take the matter in hand, and had made some collections tor the purpose. That time has passed away, but he states that he will be most happy to place his slender stock of materials at the disposal either of the Uni versity of Cambridge or of Trinity College, Dublin, “to both of which societies Bishop Bedell was so bright an orna ment.”* This appeal was made so long ago as 1849, and to the present day Trinity College has not responded. Yet, surely some of the Fellows of the University might have done for Bishop Bedell what Dr. Todcl has done for St. Patrick, especially in these times, when sympathy with the natives is no longer unfashionable in the higher circles of Irish society. In connexion with the succeeding bishops of * Volume iii., p. 166.
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Kilmore arid Ardagh, which were reunited after Bedell’s death, there is not much worthy of special notice. In 1796 the Hon. Charles Broderick was translated to this see from Clonfert, and became Archbishop of Cashel. George de la Poer Beresford followed him from the same see in 1802, and ruled over this united diocese till his death in 184]. Then Kilmore, Ardagh, and Elphin were united under the Church Temporalities Act, Bishop Leslie, of Elphin, succeeding Bishop Beresford at Kilmore, and being himself succeeded by the present Lord Primate, of whom a good deal has been said in the preceding pages.
The present Bishop of Kilmore is Dr. Hamilton Verschoyle, of whose career as chaplain of Baggot-street Episcopal Church, Dublin, and secretary of the Church Education Society, I have already spoken. The diocese of Kilmore includes nearly the whole of the county of Cavan arid about three-fourths of the county of Leitrim, with some portions of Meath and Fermanagh, having an area of 738,503 statute acres. Elphin contains about the same number of acres, and includes the greater part of the county of Roscommon, a considerable part of the county of Sligo, and some por tions of Galway and Mayo. Ardagh includes nearly the whole of Longford and parts of Westmeath, Cavan, Leitrim, Sligo, and Roscommon, and contains 490,232 statute acres. The three united dioceses, therefore, contain about 2,000,000 of statute acres, and extend through no less than ten counties. The total population of Kilmore is 209,714, of Elphin 201,879, of Ardagh 136,298. So that the population of which Bishop Verschoyle considers himself to be the legal and scriptural chief pastor, amounts to 547,391 souls — rather a heavy charge to rest upon the conscience of a minister who cannot boast of either the transcendent learning or the burning zeal of his predecessor, Bishop Bedell. He is, on the con trary, a very quiet, prudent, reserved man, who studies with whom he ought to shake hands, and the number of fingers it would be proper to extend. Bishop Bedell fell upon evil times; not so Bishop Verschoyle. “The lines have fallen to him in pleasant places; yea, he has a goodly heritage.”
2i
482 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
About two miles from his palace of Kilmore stands the county town of Cavan, in which there is a respectable Protestant population, and of which a great Protestant lord, whose family — the Maxwells — are intimately connected with the Church, is the proprietor. There is a goodly num ber of Protestant gentry in the neighbourhood. The palace of Kilmore is quite good enough to match with the palace of Lord Farnham, and their respective demesnes, which are beautifully planted, extending over undulating hills and vales, are in neighbourly juxtaposition. The bishop’s lands around the palace are exceedingly rich ; the cathedral of Kilmore stands like a pretty parish church within the gates of the bishop’s lawn. Altogether, it would be difficult to conceive a greater social contrast than exists between the Kilmore of Bishop Bedell and the Kilmore of Bishop Verschoyle. In one thing, hoAvever, the lapse of two centuries has made very little change. The British settlers connected with the Established Church, who were then ten per cent, of the population in Kilmore, are now fifteen, in Elphin they are only five, in Ardagh they are eight, and the average per cent, of Episcopalians in the three united dioceses is 9f, which is less than the proportion mentioned by Bishop Bedell. Of course if we count the Presbyterians the proportion of Protestants to Roman Catholics would be greater ; but the Establishment has no right to take credit for the multiplication of a Protestant sect, which it did all in its power to exterminate, which it now barely tolerates, and whose clergy it has never recognized. The number of Church people in the diocese of Kilmore is .31,646, in Elphin 10,506, in Ardagh 11,044; total, 53,196. There is a very great falling off since 1834. The number of Church people in these dioceses then was — Kilmore, 46,879; Elphin, 16,465 ; Ardagh, 17,702. This makes a difference of something like 15,000 members lost to the Church in that period.
The number of Protestant Dissenters, who are nearly all Presbyterians, is, in Kilmore, 8,182 ; in Elphin, 1,865 ; in Ardagh, 1,069 ; total, 11,116.
The number of benefices in Kilmore, including perpetual
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and district cures, is 55, with 26 curates; the number in Elphin is 41, with 7 curates ; the number in Ardagh is 32, with 18 curates. Total number of benefices of all sorts, 100. The bishop is the patron of 27 in Kilmore, 28 in Elphin, and 24 in Ardagh — 79 altogether. The reader should pause a moment here to reflect upon the power which the State puts into the hands of one man.
Dr. Yerschoyle, a gentleman of ordinary capacity, is the ecclesiastical ruler by law of more than half a million of people, inhabiting ten counties, having under his control 150 clergymen, including those miserable tenants-at-will called curates, and having at his disposal 79 livings, for which there is the most eager competition ; that is, if he lives long enough, he can dispense to 79 clergymen a life interest in a sum total of revenue amounting to four-fifths of £38,000 per annum.
Kilmore, like most of the northern dioceses, is amply en dowed with land, and contains some rich livings. Killesh- andra, 880 acres of glebe land; Killesher, 2,107; Killinkere, 677; Kinawley, 912; Lurgan, 994; Oughteragh, 669; Tomregan, 615 ; Urney, 655 ; Belturbet, 793 ; Carigollen, 955; Castlerahan, 607; Drumgoom, 613; Drmnlease, 934; Innismagrath, 889 ; Killargue, 918. In Ardagh — Annaduff has 611 acres ; Ardagh, 750 ; Fenagh, 960; Killubrid, 777 ; and Mohill, 809.
When the King carved out the confiscated lands of Ulster it must be confessed that he gave a very liberal slice to the Church, intended, it is well known, with the tithes to supply the spiritual wants of the whole population. That this should be done by the Episcopal clergy very soon became a moral, and even a physical impossibility. They were in capacitated for fulfilling the trust. The necessary conclusion to be drawn from this fact by those who hold that the State is bound to supply the religious wants of the community is, that there should be a different distribution of Church property.
The following synopsis for the whole of Ireland is given
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484 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
by Archdeacon Hincks from the latest Parliamentary re turns, moved for by Captain Stacpoole and Sir F. Heygate, also from the Ecclesiastical Register, by the late John C. Erck, A.M.: —
Total number of benefices in Ireland, . . . . . 1,510
Total number of churches in Ireland, ..... 1,551
Total number of clergy doing parochial duty (as nearly as can
be ascertained) . . . . . . . . ‘2,140
Net increase since 1826—112 benefices, 359 churches, 163 clergy. Number of members of the Established Church in Ireland, . 693,357 Average of Church population to each benefice, . . . 459 Net value of benefices after deductions, &c., . . £390,659 }$. 8d. Average proportion of net revenue to each benefice, . £258 14s. Od. Average proportion of net revenue to each member of Estab lished Church, 1 1 s. 3d.
Number of benefices in Ireland containing twenty-five (or under)
members of the Established Church, . . . . 114
Total number of members of Established Church in these 114
benefices, ......... 1,589
Total net revenue of these 1 14 benefices, .... £18,735
Average proportion of members to each of these 114 benefices, 14 Average proportion of net revenue to each of these 114 bene fices £164 Gs. Wd.
Average proportion of net revenue to each member of Estab lished Church therein, £11 15s. 9d.
There has been a good deal of controversy among the clergy, on the subject of the Ecclesiastical Registries Bill, which was brought into Parliament by the new Primate, and passed into law without the knowledge of the clergy, though it taxed them a penny in the pound. One clergyman, the Rev. ‘Dr. Foley, has published some powerful letters about it, censuring the conduct of the Archbishop. Dr. Foley, however, must have been aware that the clergy shared his sentiments to some extent, or perhaps he would not have spoken so strongly. His letters confirm what has been already said about the arbitrary power of the prelates. But they reveal something more as to the legal meshes in which the Irish Church helplessly struggles. He pointed out “ the uncon stitutional character of the Ecclesiastical Registries Bill, the
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 485
secrecy with which it had been concocted, the ignorance of both Houses of Parliament of the powers taken under it, and of the use to which they would immediately be put ; the total unconsciousness of the clergy both of the nature and design of the measure until after they had been com pelled to pay the tax; the fact that the moneys obtained were to be employed to pay the registrars of the bishops, for that part of their duty in which they merely act as secretaries to the bishops themselves, and for the remunera tion of judges, who demand no less than five hundred fees for all their functions from the suitors in their courts.” He observed that to the clergy, unanimously, the taxation, without representation, without consultation, without infor mation, without intimation of any sort, done secretly, and for purposes for which they were never taxed before, and had no rigl it to be taxed at all, seemed unjust ; and finally ex pressed astonishment that within the precincts of the sacred edifice itself, in which a congregation had assembled for worship at visitation, the tables of the money-changers were openly set up for the enforcement of the tax under episcopal sanction. These points, together with others, were embodied in the memorials from the clergy of Cashel and Emly, of Deny and Raplioe, of Cork, Cloyiie, and Ross, and were put forward in numerous letters. The only answer, after a protracted delay, was a mere intimation that the proper time for reconsidering the measure would be after the first audit. The writer adds — “ And I must say that, not only has the measure itself been oppressively conceived, but that the handing over of the clergy to a special pleader for reply to their respectful memorials is unworthy of brethren, in consistent with the true theory of the bishops’ position, and injurious to their influence. It is the common opinion that if the predecessors of the Archbishops of Armagh and Dub lin were still alive we should nob have to complain of this wrong. At the same time, it is but just to add that, as the Archbishop of Dublin must have been unacquainted with the circumstances of the Church of Ireland, he is neither
486 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
considered to have been the author nor to be the obstruction to its repeal.”
Again, Dr. Foley says, “Neither do the things exist now for which these fees were pretended to be levied, nor are the very names — synodals, proxies, exhibits, procurations, and the rest of it — generally intelligible. Exhibits indeed were understood to be the liability of a curate, or other clergyman, to present annually (at a cost of about 6<s. Sd. for showing them) his letters of orders, in order to prove to the bishop who had ordained him, perhaps twenty years before, a clergy man of the diocese in which he still ministered, that he had been ordained at all.
“ Besides, the clergy deny altogether the necessity of the tax. There are sixteen gentlemen holding the office of vicar- general, some for one diocese, some for two, others again for three, and one in particular, who also fills the onerous post of Acting Ecclesiastical Commissioner (at a salary of £1,000 per annum), represents the vicars-general of no less than six dioceses, in the courts of which he has perhaps never once sat to administer justice. It is not too much to say that any working barrister would in one half term despatch the judicial business of all these judges put together. If the bishops require them as advisers, and clergy and laity require their signatures to marriage licences and other documents, those who derive the benefit should pay them for these services. It would be a preposterous suggestion that the bar, for example, should have to pay the salaries of the judges and officials of the courts, and not the suitors or the Government of the country ; and it would be equally pre posterous if the judges, after getting their salaries, should demand special fees for their secretaries, and for every single act they performed, as these ecclesiastical judges do under five hundred different ingenious designations.
“ The laity will be astonished to learn that they, too, are carefully considered in this formidable list of five hundred charges; and the circumstance may show them that, besides being concerned as members of the Church, interested in its
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS. 487
independence and welfare, they have common cause with the clergy in resisting this novel assumption of taxing power. Under the heading of faculties in the orders, the layman, anxious to have liberty to sit in a special pew, will learn that he must pay 10s. Gd. to the judge, and 10*. to the registrar. If he kindly intends to build an additional gallery for the accommodation of himself and his neighbours 111 his parish church, he must first satisfy the same judge with two guineas, and give his registrar £2 for the liberty to expend his money. The erection of a monument or stained-glass window is only permitted, on payment to the same parties of £l 11s. Gd. and of 10.9. A school-house cannot be built in a church-yard without giving VTicar-General Gayer or Ball a guinea, and paying the registrar £1 besides. The same fee is charged for putting up an organ, or to “ alter a pew ;” and finally, in a comprehensive spirit, lest any thing- should have escaped mention, “any other faculty” is specified as obtainable only on paying £’2 11s. Gd., as if the object were to dry up the sources of Christian benevolence, and to drive the worshippers to the nearest conventicle.”
Dr. Foley enjoys a good living, as rector of Templetuohy, in the county of Tipperary ; so he can afford to speak freely. If he were a curate in the Primate’s diocese he would soon treat him as he treated poor Mr. Lyons thirty-three years ago.
The writer concludes as follows : — “ The question is one of principle, whether, as subjects, we shall renounce our privileges under the constitution ; whether, as clergy, we shall allow a usurpation over our incomes unknown to ecclesiastical law, and unsanctioned by the canons, articles, and polity of the Church ; whether, as Protestants, lay and clerical, we shall rest satisfied with an imitation of one of the worst pretensions of the Homish episcopacy, the passing in secret conclave, without so much as our opinion being sought, of laws binding on us all. There is reason to believe that this measure is not agreeable to the bishops generally, any rrfore than to the clergy. Several of them are under stood to have given private expression to their opinions on
4<88 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the subject. I have not myself, and never knew any of the clergy to have, the least disposition to derogate from the authority of the bishops, or to withhold from them due respect; but it is to be lamented, that at a time when the unity which results from brotherly feeling, consultation, and confidence is so necessary to meet aggression from with out, the episcopal body should suppose that they do not need the co-operation of the clergy and people in the work of defence. While all other bodies can meet for their common purposes, and even for attack upon us; while serious charges are impending affecting our interests ; while the Ultramon tane bishops are said to be in secret treaty with the Govern ment of the country, and while it is no longer concealed that their demands are to be complied with, to our detriment, there is certainly scope enough for all the ability and activity of the Primate in collecting the views of the Church and of the Protestants of Ireland, and in making that opinion distinctly known to the Government and our brethren in England, who, unhappily, are not made aware that there exists any law of opinion among us upon the vital questions of present debate.”
This controversy about the Registries Act brought to light a practice most discreditable to the ecclesiastical autho rities, and startling to those who have placed implicit confi dence in their official returns. But it now appears that in certain cases they had been wilfully falsified. I find the following in the Clerical Journal : — ‘‘ For a very long time a system of misrepresentation of income has been practised by the Irish beneficed clergy, to which, strange to say, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have been privy. The Church Temporalities Bill enacted, among other rules, that clergy men holding benefices the value of which, exclusively of glebe-house or residence, should exceed £300 per annum, should pay a certain tax or assessment. The same Act ordered that certain deductions, including fees at visitations, should be made when calculating the net value of £300 or upwards for the purpose of such assessment. The bishops, however, in many cases, to ease their clergy, refrained from
INSPECTION OF BISHOPRICS.
collecting their legal visitation fees, and still further to benefit the clergy, suffered the incumbents to represent to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners that these fees were still paid at visitations, although such a representation was contrary to fact. The result was, that many clergymen were enabled not only to pocket the visitation fees which the bishops gave them, but also, to a considerable extent, to escape the taxation which the Church Temporalities Act intended to impose. Many of the Irish livings are worth £.300 a year or thereabouts, and by the allowance or deduction of the few pounds or shillings payable as proxies at visitations, are brought under the standard of £300 a year, and are wholly exempted from this tax. All livings over £300 a year are brought by the same deduction to a lower standard than the Act intended. Thus the bishops, besides giving their own fees to the clergy, which their lordships had every right to give, have given the clergy the privilege of “ making believe” that they paid these proxies to the bishops in order to defeat the Act, and this it is clearly evident their lord ships had no right to do. Strange to say, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland have all along connived at this evasion, whereby their own revenues have been materially diminished, and a wrong done to those poorer benefices which otherwise might have received augmentation from the Commissioners’ funds. The Commissioners and Bishops have, no doubt, received a little popularity among incum bents in return for thus allowing the Act to be partially set at nought ; but on the other hand, the standard of clerical morality has been lowered, and the clergy, thus encouraged to defeat the Act of Parliament by misrepresentation, have learned to apply a similar process to the Acts of their Arch bishops.
“ It thus appears that the very returns which the Deny memorialists now denounce as inaccurate and calculated to mislead, were furnished by themselves, and that the inac curacy, which was never complained of while it tended to their pecuniary gain, is now made the subject of indignant remonstrance because it happens to cause pecuniary loss,
490 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
The incumbent of Carndonagh, who used actually to pay £1 3s. 7d. for visitation fees and diocesan schoolmaster, but who returned to the Commissioners his payment for visitation fees alone as £3 C-s. 9(7., now finds himself liable to a bond fide payment of a few shillings more than what he actually used to pay for visitation fees, but still much less than what he returned himself as liable to pay. He will also have to pay in future £7 or £8 as tax to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, as he will no longer be able, by help of the imaginary payment of the former large sum of £3 6s. 9d.} to reduce, nominally, his income below the standard of £300 per annum, so as to escape the tax.”
PAET THIBD,
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION.
CHAPTEE XXIV.
THE Established Church is the greatest difficulty in the way of a reconciliation between conflicting races in Ireland, and between the old nation and the British Government. I there fore face that difficulty first. I am not about to discuss the question of ecclesiastical establishments. Whether it is right that every nation should establish by law and endow some form of religion as a recognition of the Supreme Ruler of human affairs ; whether Christianity, as the only true religion, should be thus recognised and supported ; whether there is any earthly tribunal competent to determine what particular creed and form of Church polity should be selected as being exclusively worthy of State patronage ; whether a mixed secular assembly, like the British legislature, possesses the requisite authority for such a purpose; whether, assuming that the true religion ought to be established by those who believe in it, they have at the same time a right to compel those who hold it to be false to contribute to its support ; whether it be right for a minority wielding the power of the State to impose its religion upon the dissentient majority, and levy a tax for the maintenance of the State Church, as a national homage to the Creator, and without any regard to political expediency, social harmony, or the rights of conscience — these are questions with which the reader will not here be troubled. They have been debated with more or less frequency in Parliament, by the press, and on the platform, during the last generation, which has been more
4-9 ‘1 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
distinguished for polemics than any age since the Refor mation.
The focus of these discussions has been the Irish Church Establishment. During the elections, at every hustings throughout Ireland, and at many in England and Scotland, the existence or non-existence of that Establishment has been a question submitted to candidates, or voluntarily taken up b}^ them as one likely to be debated and determined by the new Parliament. Views widely different are entertained by the representatives of the opposing parties. The Conserva tives declare their solemn conviction that upon the main tenance of the Irish Church depends the existence of all Protestant institutions, and that the Establishment is the great bulwark in Ireland of civil and religious liberty. On the other hand, the Liberal candidates, Protestant as well as Catholic, declare Avith equal solemnity their conviction, that the Establishment is a monument of conquest and sectarian ascendancy, which has checked the progress and marred the happiness of Ireland, by separating her population, into two hostile nations, whose conflicts render hopeless all efforts to produce the unity of feeling and co-operation necessary to social progress. By some it is contended, that even as a political institution the Establishment is essential to the union of Great Britain and Ireland ; that its abolition would be followed by Papal ascendancy, and the suppression of Protestantism, and therefore that it should be upheld by all the resources of the British Government at every cost.
It is in this practical point of view that I wish to discuss this most important subject. My object is simply to inquire what would be the probable results of an Act of Parliament severing the connexion between the Church and State in Ireland, and placing the clergy of all denominations on exactly the same footing. Would such a measure, if carried, strengthen or weaken the Government ? Would it utterly annihilate the disendowed Church ? Would it cause the slow or speedy extinction of Protestantism in Ireland ? Would it be followed by a large accession of political power and spiritual influence to the Roman Catholic priesthood,
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 493
leading to the ultimate establishment of the papal hierarchy, with an ascendancy fatal to religious liberty ? Would it tend to mitigate sectarian dissensions, or would it inflame the old animosity by which society in Ireland has been so long rent into hostile factions ? In attempting to forecast the future we must be guided by the light of the past. We must consider the natural operation, of certain principles, and endeavour to profit by the experience of countries where those principles have been at work. We must also make allowance for the peculiar forces that are likely to modify their action under existing circumstances in Ireland. If we do this in a calm philosophic spirit, solely for the purpose of ascertaining probable results, and forming an idea of the new state of things likely to arise from the contemplated changes, I think we shall not go far astray. To attempt this fore shadowing of the future cannot be regarded as presumptuous on my part, for nearly every man who writes or speaks on the Irish Church utters prophecies with the utmost con fidence. According to one set of prophets we may anticipate with certainty an overwhelming flood of national calamities, — according to another set we may expect a copious out pouring of national blessings, if the legislature determine that the six hundred thousand Church Protestants of Ireland shrill henceforth maintain their own clergy, and if those clergy be divested of the privileges with which they have been hitherto clothed by the State. Could we fairly compare the grounds of these respective vaticinations in the impartial spirit of scientific investigation, I think we should be confer ring a favour upon the public by allaying unfounded alarms on the one hand, and moderating over sanguine expectations on the other.
It is now generally admitted that the solution of this Irish question cannot much longer be evaded. The Roman Catholic bishops and clergy have formed a society called “ The National Association of Ireland,” the main object of which is to procure the disendowment of the Irish Church. A large number of able and energetic men have been returned to Parliament pledged solemnly to use their utmost exertions
494 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
to carry the measure in the House of Commons. Many of the wisest of the clergy admit the urgency of the case, and counsel their brethren to look its difficulties in the face, and consider whether they should not be prepared to accept some other mode of clerical maintenance, even though that other mode should bring with it a loss of much worldly influence and rank, to be compensated by the gain of real efficiency and a sounder basis for spiritual work. Indeed, there prevails not only a general misgiving, but serious apprehension throughout the Episcopalian body, that the days of the Establishment are numbered. Supposing, then, that this apprehension should be realised, let us endeavour calmly to estimate the consequences to the Government, to the Episcopal Church itself, to Protestantism generally, to the Roman Catholic Church, and to society in this country. In the first place, it should be borne in mind that the apprehended change, whenever it comes, will not be a violent disruption ; the Establishment need not fear sudden death. Its bishops and clergy will not share the fate of the two thousand Nonconformist ministers who were turned out of their parishes and homes by the fiat of Charles II. They will not be evicted from their palaces and glebes, from their bishoprics, deaneries, rectories, vicarages, perpetual curacies, &c., without provision for themselves or their families, pursued by a persecuting Government, and abandoned to the precarious support of the voluntary system. They will not have to make the sacrifices by which the founders of the Free Church of Scotland proved to the world that even in this commercial and materialistic age earnest faith and self- sacrificing zeal are still found upon the earth. The revolution which the Irish Church will have to undergo in the process of separation from the State will be silent and gradual, with out a single convulsive effort or agonizing throe. By the Church Temporalities Act half the Irish bishoprics were abolished, but not a single bishop was disturbed till the hand of death relieved the incumbents of the doomed sees, one by one, from their earthly cares and responsibilities. Then the revenues of the vacant sees passed into the posses-
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 495
sion of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. No bishop, priest, or deacon lost a shilling or suffered one hour’s privation or distress in mind, body, or estate by the legal annihilation of one-half of the Episcopal bench. Thus gradually, insensibly, and pleasantly would the change pass over the Irish branch of the United Church when separated from the State ; with this difference in its favour, that not one of its remaining bishoprics will be abolished, and the emancipated Irish Church may restore, if she will, the ten extinguished sees, and enjoy all the synadical freedom which she now envies in her Roman Catholic rival. No statesman in the House of Commons will propose to diminish in the slightest degree the vested interests of the present incumbents. Even the Roman Catholic prelates do not demand any such sacrifice. “ The National Association,” of which most of them are members, unanimously adopted the following resolution on the 29th of December, 18G-i< :—
“ That we demand the disendowment of the Established Church in Ireland, as the sole condition on which social peace and stability, general respect for the laws, unity of sentiment and of action for national objects, can ever prevail in Ireland. And in making this demand we emphatically disavow any intention to interfere in the vested rights, or to injure or offend any portion of our fellow-countrymen, our desire being rather to remove a most prolific source of civil discord, by placing all religious denominations on a footing of perfect equality, and leaving each Church to be maintained by the voluntary contributions of its members.”
The worst that can happen, then, is that as sees and parishes become vacant the incomes belonging to them will lapse to the State, to be disposed of in some form most beneficial to the community at large, as the wisdom of Par liament may determine. The vacancies will occur at such intervals that there will be ample time to arrange for main taining the ministrations of religion by making due pro vision on the voluntary principle for the support of the clergy who may be appointed under the new order of things. Thus the Establishment will die, but the Church will live. It will die, not by sudden violence, but by slow decay, and from its death will spring more vigorous life. The Church
496 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
will live, no longer endowed with encumbering wealth and offensive grandeur as a hated monopolist, but gifted instead with ecclesiastical freedom, purer zeal, higher spirituality, and superior efficiency.
Assuming, then, that this change is accomplished, let us inquire whether it will have brought any damage upon the Government of the country. Will the Irish Executive be paralysed when deprived of the support of the ecclesiastical Establishment ? AVill its authority be less respected by the people, because the Lord Archbishop of Dublin no longer stands by the viceregal throne, or sits in the Privv Council?
•7 O ^
On the contrary, the Government will be freed from great odium and bitter antagonism, arising from the conviction in the minds of the Roman Catholic people, of favouritism and partiality towards a rival Church, comparatively small. We know what favouritism does in families — what ill-feeling there is towards a pet, pampered child, especially if it should be considered arrogant, insolent, and overbearing. It pro duces among the other children envy, jealousy, disaffection, a rankling sense of injustice, and a predisposition to rebellion. A Government should be paternal and impartial. If it favours one community on the ground of religion, confer ring privileges and immunities denied to all others, the denominations thus unfairly treated are rendered more bitterly resentful because of the religious element and the sting of conscience. There is thus created a constant and powerful obstacle to the legitimate action and influence of Government from which society grievously suffers. We may, indeed, conceive that this disadvantage would be counterbalanced by the superior loyalty, zeal, and activity of the favoured sect exerted 011 behalf of the civil authori ties. These conditions have always existed in Ireland when the Tories were in office, but the effect has been to multiply the difficulties of government one hundred fold, by in creasing the vindictive jealousy, and exasperating the ani mosity of the great mass of the population existing without the pale of the favoured Church. A Government conducted on Tory principles, however, is a thing not to be expected
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 497
again in Ireland. Except at brief intervals Ireland has been ruled by Liberal Governments since the passing of the Reform Act ; and we may rest assured that those intervals will be far more brief and remote for the future. Now it is well known that the whole force of the Established Church, as a State institution, and all the influence of every kind wielded by an overwhelming majority of the clergy, have been employed steadily and persistently against the Govern ment of the country, whenever and so long as it has been in the hands of the Liberal party. The Established clergy have thwarted its measures and resisted its policy in every pos sible way. The newspaper organs which they support have laboured incessantly to weaken its power, to damage its re putation, to bring it into contempt, and to effect its down fall. On the subject of National Education, particularly, the clergy have persisted in a course of determined unmiti gated antagonism to the Government for thirty years. If the Church were separated from the State, much of this antagonism would at once cease by the removal of its cause —namely, the consciousness of a right to direct and influence the Government, inherent in an Established Church. On the other hand, the opposition and disaffection already re ferred to in the non-established denominations, arising from the favouritism and partiality of the Government, would be at once removed by the establishment of the principle of religious equality. The conclusion seems, therefore, inevi table that the Government of Ireland, instead of losing strength or useful support, would gain immensely in moral power and capacity for good by the separation of the Church from the State. Orangeism, which is an embodiment of the most virulent spirit of Protestant ascendancy, being an off shoot of the Establishment, would wither and die after the eradication of its parent trunk. The political causes of contention being removed, the country would cease to be divided into two hostile camps, and the people of every de nomination, having no longer separate interests, exciting bad passions, would gradually be amalgamated, and form one homogeneous nation — a consummation hitherto pre-
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498 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
vented by the Establishment, which has kept the races divided and angry, like a rock placed in the channel of a rapid river.
The argument most relied upon by the defenders of the Establishment is the assumed fact that it is the great bul wark of Protestantism and of civil and religious liberty in Ireland. If this were true, its abolition would certainly be the greatest calamity to the country, and no effort should be spared to prevent such a catastrophe. With regard to civil and religious liberty, however, it will perhaps be suffi cient to mention that the cause represented by that phrase, as it is understood in Great Britain, has always found its most determined opponents in the Irish Church. Every measure tending to promote religious freedom, every con cession to the claims of conscience, granted by the Imperial Parliament, from the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts down to the last Oaths Bill has been resisted by the great majority of the Irish prelates and clergy, and by those who represent their sentiments in Parliament. To religious freedom, therefore, the Irish Establishment has not been a bulwark, but a barrier. Religious freedom being one of the most vital elements of true Protestantism, the institution which opposes the one cannot possibly promote the other. Yet in Ireland one hears the constant repetition of the statement that the Established Church is the “ bulwark of Protestantism.” This opinion is not confined to its own members. It is held by a considerable number of Presby terians and Wesley an s. I have asked an eminent Wesleyan minister what he exactly meant by the phrase. Did he really believe tlmt connexion with the State, and the worldly power, grandeur, wealth, and influence thence resulting, couid strengthen the cause of evangelical truth, or render the word of God more powerful in the conversion of sinners, and the edification of saints ? I was very much astonished at his reply. He declared his conviction to be that the separation of the Episcopal Church from the State would take from Irish Protestantism its prestige, and so much of its power that large numbers of the laity would fall away
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 499
from the reformed faith and join the Church of Rome. He also declared his belief that many of the clergy, deprived of their endowments, and of the social status which the Estab lishment confers, would relinquish their charges, desert their posts, and abandon the work of the ministry. I have reason to think that the fear of such results prevails in the minds of many sincere friends of the Church. Yet if such an impu tation came from its opponents, it would be justly regarded as a libel.
It would seem as if the anomalous state of things produced by the Irish Establishment, and the political ascendancy which it fosters, exercise a perverting influence upon the moral feeling and judgment of Christians, just as the system of slavery did in the Southern States of America. How can we otherwise account for the views to which I have referred being held even by ministers of the Gospel who have no direct interest in that Establishment ? If those clergymen were to preach or lecture on the evidences of Christianity, they would base their most powerful and telling argument upon the fact, that the Gospel prevailed over heathenism in spite of all the worldly power, authority, wealth, influence, and prestige, with which the idolatrous establishments of the pagan world were supported and surrounded. They would quote triumphantly the language of the Apostle Paul, declaring that the weapons of evangelical warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and yet that they are mighty, through God, to the pulling down of strongholds ; that the victories of Christianity are not won by human might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord, &c. These same Irish Protestant advocates of Christianity would go further, and affirm that its purity and power continued in all their divine force, converting and elevating the masses, until the alliance of the Church with the State, which brought into the sanctuary a flood of corruption. This extraordinary inconsistency in the defenders of the Irish Church did not escape the atten tion of the late Dr. Chalmers. It is well known that he was the most eloquent and powerful champion of ecclesias tical establishments, yet he indignantly repudiated the
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500 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
argument faithlessly urged on behalf of the Irish Establish ment. On the 17th of March, 1829, that great man delivered a speech at a public meeting in Edinburgh, in which he said — “What have all the enactments of the statute-book done for the cause of Protestantism in Ireland? And how comes it to pass that when single-handed truth walked the land with the might and prowess of a conqueror, no sooner was she propped up by the authority of the State, no sooner was the armour of intolerance given to her, than her brilliant career of victory was for ever ended ? When she took up the carnal and laid down the spiritual weapon, her strength went out of her, she was struck with impotency. In giving up the warfare of principle for the warfare of politics she
lost her power I am not aware of any public
topic on which the popular and prevailing cry ever ran more counter to the whole drift and spirit of Christianity. What other instruments do we read of in the New Testament for defending Protestantism but the Word of God and the Spirit of God? How do the Apostles explain these principles when they speak of the triumphs of that truth which is mighty to the pulling down of strongholds ? They tell us that it is because the weapons of their warfare were not carnal, but spiritual. I consider those spiritual weapons the only ones which are of force to assail the strongholds either of Popery or Paganism. The kingdom of God refuses to be indebted for its advancement to any other. Reason, Scrip ture, prayer, ought to comprise the whole armoury of religion, and by these alone the battles of our faith are to be success fully fought I want truth and force to be
dissevered from each other, the moral and spiritual not to be implicated with the grossly physical means. Never will our cause prosper, never will it prevail in Ireland, until it is delivered from the outrage and contamination of so unholy an alliance. It is not because I hold Popery to be innocent that I want the removal of these disabilities ; but because I hold, that if these were taken out of the way she would be ten times more assailable. It is not because I am indif ferent to the good of Protestantism that I want to displace
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 5()1
these artificial crutches from under her ; but because I want that, freed from every symptom of decrepitude and decay, she should stand forth in her own native strength, and make manifest to all men how firm a support she has on the good ness of her cause, and on the basis of her orderly and well- laid arguments.”
Well might Dr. Chalmers ask, “What have all the enact ments of the statute-book done for Protestantism in Ireland?” Nothing but to give it political crutches, which brought on decrepitude and decay ; to render it odious to the people, by associating it with injustice and oppression ; creating insuperable obstacles to its progress, by rousing against it the antipathy of a subjugated race, and the antagonism of oppressed and insulted nationality ; attaching to the Pro testant Church hypocritical adherents, and too often filling its offices with ministers destitute of the spirit of the Gospel. Up to the present generation, with very rare exceptions, the history of the Irish Church was the history of a clergy devoid of all spiritual qualifications for their sacred office, grossly negligent of its duties, and insensible to its responsi bilities, “greedy of filthy lucre,” and worldly in all their ways. Passages from Church historians, describing arid deploring the utter secularity of the Established clergy, and the ruinous neglect of their parishes, might be multiplied to any extent.
It is true that a great reform has been effected in the Irish Church during the last thirty years. But this reform, as I have fully proved, has not resulted from the regular action of the Establishment, nor from the working out of the parochial system. On the contrary, it has been wrought by voluntary agencies in spite of that system, by the building of proprietary churches, endowed by private munificence, and supported by pew rents; by the establishment of various voluntary societies, extraneous to the regular ecclesiastical regime, in violation of canonical law, and sometimes in defiance of episcopal authority. In fact, the “revival” which has taken place in the Irish Church has been produced by an invasion of voluntaryism ; while the funds by which
502 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
its educational and missionary agencies are maintained have been drawn in a great measure from England. And even where the parochial system itself has been rendered more effective, it has been in rare cases indeed that the work was done by bishops, deans, rectors, or vicars. The working clergy are, and have been, curates obliged to live 011 the crumbs which fall from the tables of the Establishment. The sum of £75 per annum is the legal stipend, sometimes raised by a stretch of generosity to £100 or £120. So that the real, practical, evangelical, pastoral, parochial work — the main work for which the Establishment is endowed by the State at the rate of about half a million sterling per annum — is done almost exclusively by those miserably paid curates and small incumbents. Who can doubt that they would be paid much bettor if the Church were separated from the State ? Who can doubt that the wealth of the episcopalian body, which possesses most of the landed property of the country, would contribute adequate support to its own clergy, or that they would become far more efficient under the new system ? I do not believe that any considerable number of the laity would forsake the Church. On the contrary, I am convinced that the number of her members would be increased, because they would be more diligently looked after by their pastors than ever they had been before, and because the Episcopal denomination would still retain all the prestige arising from rank, wealth, fashion, and re spectability. It would still be the gentleman’s Church.
The Established Church in Ire-land has had to contend, no doubt, with considerable difficulties. In every parish where she had adherents she had to encounter the increasing
O
activity and proselytizing zeal of the Roman Catholic priests and their various religious communities of both sexes. There was also the competition of Presbyterians, Wesleyans, and other Dissenters. Yet, strange as it may appear, not withstanding all these stimulants to exertion, the members of the Church, except the upper classes of society, had been until lately very much neglected by the parochial ministers. In remote rural districts especially, Churchmen and their
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 503
families were often left as sheep without a shepherd. In addition to the testimonies which I have already adduced, I have been assured by an estimable clergyman who laboured successfully for six years in Connaught, that to his certain knowledge a greater number of Protestants had been lost to the Church by sheer neglect, and — to avoid the condition of heathenism to which they were abandoned — had joined the Church of Rome, than all the converts from Popery of which the Society of Irish Church Missions can boast in the diocese of Tuam.
It is, perhaps, in the nature of an Established Church to produce a certain amount of apathy and indolence in its ministers. Whether they work or play they receive their incomes nil the same. Their position is quite independent of their congregations, and they have a morbid jealousy of any interference on the part of the laity with their rights, privileges, or duties. The consequence is that the people are neglected and alienated. So much was this the case formerly in Ireland that it has often been a subject of wonder to reflecting persons, not that the members of the Established Church were so few, but that it could have existed so long, and that it did nut gradually die oif, till nothing remained of it but a sinecure clergy. The phenomenon that the nocks survived under such circumstances is accounted for by various influences, some of them peculiar to Ireland, which have tended to keep them together. In the first place a large majority of the landed proprietors of the country belong to the favoured sect, and there is scarcely one of them who has not had a near relation “ in the Church “ — a son, a brother, a son-in-law, an uncle, or a cousin — enjoying the status of a gentleman, and a respectable income from the Establishment. The landlords, therefore, even where they cared little about religion, and perhaps seldom attended public worship, were bound to the Church by’ the strongest ties of worldly interest, and used all their political and social influence to uphold it. The most sacred article of their creed was to maintain “ our glorious Constitution in Church and State.” Their tenants, their servants, and dependents
504 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of all sorts were expected to do the same on pain of being accused of disloyalty, and treated accordingly. Then, up to a comparatively late period, when the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics began to bear fruit, all the Government offices, from the highest to the lowest, and every post con nected with the administration of justice throughout the country, in all the counties and boroughs, were held by members of the Established Church. Thus the whole official power, as well as the property of the nation, was on the side of that highly favoured community, which, be it re membered, numbered only eight hundred thousand souls when the population was eight millions. No wonder, there fore, that the members of the Church should be zealous in its support, and should praise “ its admirable liturgy,” how ever addicted they might be to sleep under the monotonous reading of it by ministers who, judging from their elocution, were totally insensible to its merits. Another cause of the hold which the Establishment has had upon the minds of the laity, was political party spirit. They regarded it as the embodiment of the “ Protestant interest” — a very ex pressive phrase, which in former times meant the “ English interest,” and in our OWTII times still means “ Protestant ascendancy ;” by which we are to understand that one-eighth of the population is to rule the other seven-eighths, and that when it ceases to do so, we shall have revolution, a rampant democracy, separation from England, Popish ascendancy, resumption of forfeited estates, and a general massacre of the Protestant inhabitants, including the Presbyterians of Ulster. To the ignorant and prejudiced portion of the Protestant community this argument in support of the Establishment must appear sufficiently strong, and we cannot be much surprised to find them denouncing any Protestant who said a word against the connexion of the Church and State, or who doubted the equity of such a system, as “ a Jesuit in disguise.” Perhaps as great a force as any of those mentioned — bearing up and keeping afloat the Establishment in spite of a weight that would sink a hundred institutions like it in any other part of the world —
REMEDIES AND REC’ONC’Tl JATION. 505
is the intense hatred of” Popery,” which has been fostered in Ireland till it has grown into a kind of chronic fanaticism, infecting nearly the whole Protestant population.
The clergy of a State Church cling with wonderful tenacity to the idea of territorial rights. They must have the whole face of the country divided into parishes and dioceses, although there may be vast districts uninhabited, or if inhabited, without any members of their own com munion. This passion for territory irrespective of population is peculiarly powerful in the Irish clerical mind. They insist that whether a parish contains Churchmen or not, it ought to have a church, a living, a rector, a curate, a sexton, and everything necessary for the celebration of Divine worship. They contend that it is the duty of the State to supply in every parish within the bounds marked out in ancient times the means divinely appointed for the cure of souls. What though the Roman Catholic population repel the rector as an intruder, and denounce his religion as heresy ; what though they have clergy of their own and churches of their own, in which they worship after the manner of their forefathers, and which they support out of their slender resources, firmly believing their Church to be the only one in which salvation is to be found ; all this is only proof that “ they arc given over to strong delusion to believe a lie.” From this delusion it is the duty of the Established clergy to deliver all the Queen’s subjects in their respective charges, and to drive away all “ erroneous and strange doctrine.” It is their business to spread the evangelical feast for the hungry and thirsty multitude. If the multitude come and partake of it, well; if not, the State and its clergy have done their duty in lifting up their testimony against Antichrist. But if the churches beyond the English pale are now empty, and have been empty for two or three hundred years, it does not follow that they will be empty for ever. The Roman Catholics may be converted, or the Celtic race may emigrate and die out like the Red Indians of America or the aborigines of our distant colonies, leaving the land to be occupied by a fresh Protestant plan-
506 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
tation. Then the Church system would be completely carried out, and the rector with his parochial staff would have something to do. The plan of the Holy City in Ire land may have been sketched by its founders like some of the American cities, on too large a scale. There are long streets and vast squares without a house, overgrown with grass and weeds. Nevertheless the apostolic ecclesiastical polity requires that the regularly-appointed orthodox watch men should go their rounds through those lonely streets and squares, crying the hours at night and ringing the bells in the day. It is of the nature of a true Churchman’s faith to believe that at some future time there will be ears to hear the watchman’s voice, and souls to demand the pastor’s care.
There is, however, something real connected with the Irish parochial system, which may have contributed to render it sacred in the eyes of Churchmen, namely, the tithes, strictly a parochial impost. Unfortunately, tithes in Ireland are an English institution. The primitive Celtic Church never could endure them, but had always before the conquest by Henry II. rejected them as a foreign abomina tion. Christianity in Ireland is fourteen or fifteen centuries old, but the tithe system has existed there not more than six or seven centuries. On this subject we need not go beyond the admission of the present Lord Primate of Ireland, who, in a Charge delivered to his clergy in 18G4, said: — “ To the clergy of the early Irish Church tithes were not paid, though it appears by some ancient canons attempts were made to establish them. In the year 1127, St. Bernard complains of the Irish, ‘ They pay no tithes ;’ and in the year 1172, Pope Alexander III., in a letter, dated the 20th of September, states, among other abuses of the Irish Church, ‘ the people in general pay no tithes.’ English influence, however, in that year sufficed to introduce them at the Council of Cashel. They formed part of the splendid bribes which Henry II. gave to the Irish clergy to induce them to conform to the usages of the English Church, and acknow ledge the Papal supremacy.”
After quoting this passage the Rev. Dr. Brady remarks ; — -
KEMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 507
“ It may accordingly be taken as an undisputed fact that tithes were originally the provision made for the national clergy of Ireland in times when the national religion was Roman Catholic, and that the power of England was exerted to establish the tithe system, and the Roman Catholic faith, at one and the same period. The above quotation from the Primate’s charge, cuts, it will be observed, at the root of an argument commonly advanced by persons less acquainted than His Grace with the ancient history of Ireland, and who assert that the Established Church obtained her present endowments by a restitution of tithes to their original purpose, namely, the maintenance of the [Protestant ?] Church, founded by St. Patrick independently of Rome. Such an argument is utterly untenable, since the Primate so plainly proves tithes to have been introduced into Ireland several centuries before the Reformation, and expressly to serve Roman Catholic purposes.”
It would be very difficult to convince the native Irish of the sacredness of an impost having such an origin, especially after being so profanely handled at the Reformation, “ when bishoprics, colleges, glebes, and tithes were divided without shame or mercy among the great men of the time, or leased out on small rents for ever to the friends and relations of the incumbents.” The Irish incumbents in the time of James I. were described as English for the most part, alien in tongue, few in number, and dubious in morals. According to a manuscript in Trinity College Library, quoted by Dr. Brady, a prelate of that time stated that the number of preaching ministers in the whole of Ireland was then only 380, while the number of parishes was 2,492, showing an average of nearly seven parishes to each of those ministers. Of these parishes more than one-half were impropriate, that is, their tithes had been seized by laymen, whose descend ants and representatives hold possession of them to this day. The new owners appointed vicars or curates, with stipends, to some not above forty shillings a year, some less ; and the good bishop adds, “ And fewe would be perswaded to assent unto anie fit enlargement.” No wonder that under these
508 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
circumstances he could not possibly get curates for the vacant churches. A commission of inquiry, in 1(315, reported “ a great deficiency of fit and worthy persons to supply the services of the several churches in the kingdom, although Jesuits and priests swarmed like wasps in every county. The bishops were therefore obliged to employ reprobate English clergymen, whose lives were “ offensive and scan dalous/’ We must not be surprised, then, that the people were backward in repairing to church, and that the places of worship were “ in a manner forsaken and desolate.” The remedies proposed by the commission were according to the spirit of the age, ecclesiastical censures and excommunica tions of contemptuous persons, fining the commonalty for non-attendance at church, and “bridling the insolencies of priests and Jesuits.” This system of “ bridling “ was carried to perfection under the “ Penal Code,” the signal failure of which to convert the people to the Established Church, or to make that Church national, is patent in the fact that its members do not now reckon twelve per cent, of the total population. “ Protestantism,” says Dr. Brady, “ so far from making progress in Ireland, has actually lost ground, and failed to maintain the relative position towards Romanism which it once occupied. For although the Protestants, in 1672, numbered 300,000, and the Roman Catholics 800,000, according to the enumeration of Sir TV. Petty ; at the last census, in 1861, there were found in Ireland only 1,293,702 of Protestants of all denominations, to 4,505,265 of Roman Catholics ; so that within a period of 192 years there lias been a relative decrease of Protestants, as compared with Roman Catholics, amounting to the large number of 395,772 persons.”
Between 1834 and 1861 the Established Church has increased in relative proportion 1 per cent., while the Roman Catholics have decreased 3 per cent. — a result accounted for by the fact that the mass of the poorer classes, being Roman Catholics, were thinned by famine and emigration. It should also be recollected that the period in question has been distinguished far more than any other by efforts to convert
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 5()9
Roman Catholics, through the medium of schools, Scripture reading, and preaching. After all, there are still in Ireland 199 parishes without a single member of the Established Church. In 1834? there were 450 parishes, with not more than twenty members each ; and it is remarkable that in 1861 this class of parishes had increased to 575. The falling off is equally striking in the next class ; in 1834 the number of parishes having more than twenty and not more than fifty members, was 382 ; in 1801 it was 416. Again, the number of parishes containing 100 Church members, which in the former year was 307, increased in the latter year to 349. The returns show a diminution of the Protestant population in all the parishes till it reaches 1,000, after which there is an increase. This is accounted for by the fact that those populous parishes are situated in cities and towns, to which many Protestant families removed from the country, broken down by the famine, driven from disturbed districts by insecurity of life and property, or attracted by the opportunity for education and other social advantages. To these we may add a number of English families who have recently settled in Dublin and other leading towns.
I have already remarked that there has been a great increase of life and activity in the Irish Church during the last thirty years ; but this change is not due to the parochial system, nor to the regular action of the Church. As an establishment it has lost ten of its bishops and a fourth of its revenues. The life and activity have been acquired from without, and the result has been what I might call the formation of a voluntary Church within an Established Church. I have shown that while the parish churches have remained nearly as they were thirty years ago, with their listless congregations, “ strangers,” to use Dr. Brady’s expression, to any interest in the decent celebration of divine services, “proprietary churches” have sprung up in large numbers in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and other towns. These have been quickly filled by families who may be regarded as the cream of the Episcopalian community — by energetic, intelligent, prosperous people, mostly of the commercial,
510 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
professional, and wealthy middle classes. The churches are built partly from public funds, and partly from voluntary subscriptions ; but the ministers are supported by the pew rents. It is by the congregations of those churches mainly that all the great enterprises which have marked the progress of this wealthy denomination have been carried on. They are the chief supporters of the educational and missionary societies, and they constitute, in fact, the very life of the Church. The bishops, it is true, have consecrated their places of worship and licensed their ministers, but this is nearly all they owe to the Establishment. By the digni taries and rectors they have been regarded with coldness and jealousy, as a sort of semi-Dissenters ; and it is only recently that the Government took them into account, as forming a legitimate portion of the Church, by giving mitres to two of their most distinguished ministers — the .Rev. John Grep-of,
o oo “
now Bishop of Cork, for whom Trinity Church, Dublin, was specially built ; and the Rev. Hamilton Yerschoyle, now Bishop of Kilmore, formerly chaplain to a Magdalen asylum in Dublin, promoted, as already stated, by Lord Palmerston, although he had been for many years Secretary to the Church Education Society, which exists in antagonism to the National system established by Government. The ministers of those churches are chosen by trustees, who pay particular regard to the personal qualifications of the candidates, always selecting the one who is most likely to fill the pews, by his fluency and fervour as an extemporaneous preacher. Lithographed sermons, drawled out in the pulpit as if the reverend reader knew as little about their contents as his hearers, may do well enough in parish churches, because whether the people hear, sleep, or stay at home, the rector receives his tithes from the landlord, and the curate his stipend from the rector. But such “preaching” would not be tolerated for more than three months in a proprietary church, because the pew-owners would insist on getting better value for their money ; and if not, they would carry their prayer- books and cushions to some other church.
If, then, the life of the Irish Church is to be fully deve-
KEMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 511
loped, if the dry bones of the valley are to live, if the energies and resources of the laity are to be put forth for the extension of Protestantism throughout the country, what better thing could be done than to set the Church free from the trammels of the State, to give the laity a voice in the selection of their ministers, and to cut off’ the fearful entail of anomalies — social wrongs, political animosities, national antipathies, sectarian jealousies, and secular burdens, in herited from the dismal past ? “ It is distressing to true Irish Churchmen,” says Dr. Brady, “ to be told that the temporalities of their Church are for the present safe ; not because they are confessed to belong righteously to the Church, but because the prejudices of English Dissenters, and the apathy of Irish Roman Catholics, prevent their abolition. These being sincerely attached to the special doctrines of the Church, regard her by no means as a political institution, but rather as a means for doing the work of Christ. The Church is to them riot merely a dejiancQ to the Pope, or a preacher of negations, but a machinery for extending a kingdom not of this world, and for teaching positive truths.”
It is altogether out of the question that the Establishment can be maintained much longer. The position is too anoma lous, too glaring an outrage on political equity, too indefen sible a violation of the principles of good government. The present Episcopalian population of Ireland is 093,357, or about one-eighth of the total population. The ecclesiastical machinery for their spiritual edification is maintained at the following cost : —
Gross. Net.
Archbishoprics and Bishoprics, . . £80,059 £55,110
Benefices, 503,159 390,659
Trustee and other Chapels, . . . 1,776 1,741
Ministers’ Money, .... 1,433 1,433
Ecclesiastical Commission, . . . 110,820 110,820
Total, . . . £697,247 £559,763
Some deductions are to be made from this total, but if we include in the estimate the annual value of the episcopal
512 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
palaces, the parsonages, and the economy estates, it will be found that the annual value of the ecclesiastical revenues of the Irish Church will exceed the sum of £600,000. The total number of the Irish clergy is 2,281. These are governed by two archbishops, and ten bishops, who cost a net sum of £55,000 per annum. The clergy divide among them an immense annual revenue, which is very unequally distributed, ministers who have most work to do receiving the least pay, and ministers who have little or nothing to do receiving the most. If the process of uniting parishes were carried out fully and consistently, as it has been so far, with the sanction of the Church authorities, we should arrive at the congrega tional system, of which Churchmen have so much horror, although it is the apostolic system. The apostles and their immediate successors cared nothing about acres, their great concern was about souls. They did not want to tether their flocks within particular bounds, nor did they deem it essential to their salvation that they should be folded within certain consecrated precincts. They fixed upon some place for the mother church, because it was the centre of a populous district, and from this centre they sent forth missionaries to the surrounding districts, organizing branch churches in the most convenient localities. The idea of marking out a certain range of territory, and dividing it into parishes, where the preachers could not get a hearing, and were driven away by the people, shaking the dust off their feet as a testimony against them, is too preposterous to be entertained arid defended anywhere out of Ireland. Nowhere else do we find the clergyman and his family with a church, a house, a glebe, and an income in a place where nothing can be done, while there is neither church, nor minister, nor income in districts where everything can be done. In adopting the congrega tional system, therefore, we should not only be returning to common sense in our ecclesiastical arrangements, but also to the apostolic method of Gospel propagation and Church extension,
With many persons the most powerful objection urged against a plan which would gradually and quietly lead to
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 513
the establishment of religious equality, with its resulting social harmony, is the confident assertion that no such results would follow; that, on the contrary, the necessary conse quence of the separation of the Protestant Church from the State would be the establishment of Roman Catholic ascend ancy, and that Rome would then acquire such overwhelming political power in the country that civil and religious liberty would cease to exist. The State, it is alleged, would then become the mere creature of the Papal hierarchy. Protestants, as during the reign of James II., would be thrust out of every office and position of power, trust, and emolument ; and Ireland would be reduced to the condition of the most enslaved Roman Catholic countries on the Continent, There fore, those who hold this view argue that in the interest of the Roman Catholics themselves the Protestant Establish ment ought to be upheld as the bulwark of civil and religious liberty, or as a breakwater to an overwhelming flood of Papal despotism. But the writers and speakers who try to frighten the public by the prediction of such a fearful deluge, forget altogether the history of the Roman Catholic countries to which they refer. They do not recollect that Spain, the native land of the Inquisition, once the most priest-ruled country in the world, where all the fat of the land and the power of the State were appropriated by the religious orders and the Church, and from which Protestants have been almost totally excluded, has succeeded in liberating itself in a great measure from the Papal yoke. The Legislature has confis cated the enormous Church property and converted it to State purposes. So greatly has the cause of civil and religious liberty advanced in that country, that one of the latest acts of the Spanish Government has been to recognise the king dom of Italy, which consists, in a great part, of the States of the Church, of which Victor Emmanuel, an excommunicated Catholic monarch, had taken forcible possession. The case of the States of the Church is, moreover, a striking proof of the fallacy of the argument that the Roman Catholic priest hood would acquire greater influence with their people if they were favoured specially by the State. In Rome the
2L
514 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
theocratic system of government was carried out to perfection. The Church was the State, and the State was the Church. All the subjects of the “ Sovereign Pontiff” were the children of the “ Holy Father,” who claimed Divine guidance in all that he did, whether as a temporal or spiritual ruler. All the world knows the result. The highest authorities have pronounced the government of the Roman States one of the worst that ever existed in Christendom. The whole mass of the people have been so disaffected towards their sacerdotal rulers that the most powerful restraints of their religion could not preserve them from open rebellion. In Ireland the priesthood is loved because the people believe the Govern ment hostile to their religion. In Rome the priesthood is hated because the people see arrayed on its side the power of the oppressor. A British minister once complained to an Iri,%h Catholic gentleman of the unreasonableness of his co religionists, who abused the Government for endeavouring to protect the peasantry from the covetousness and violence of their own clergy in the matter of will-making and in cases of assault. The Catholic gentleman replied, “ Yon have adopted the wrong method. If you want to alienate the people from their spiritual rulers, pass an act to the effect that it shall not be lawful to question the validity of any will made by a priest or under his control ; and another act that no priest shall be liable to a prosecution for assaulting a member of his own flock. You can give still more effective aid to the proselytising missions of the Established Church if you place the sum of £50 per quarter in the bank to the credit of every parish priest in Ireland. At the same time let the bishops, dignitaries, and parish priests be constantly invited to dine with the Lord Lieutenant, and let as many Government places as possible be given to their brothers, nephews, and friends. If, in the course of ten years, this system of State patronage does not enable the Protestant clergy to operate upon the Roman Catholic laity with ten fold power, set me down as a false prophet.”
But whether the result of the separation would be the establishment of religious equality by the endowment of all,
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 515
or the endowment of none ; — whether every minister with a certain number of people as a congregation, whatever might be the denomination, should have a Government stipend ; — or whether every church should be left to stand on its own footiiio\ and to live by its own resources — there is no doubt
o” •*
that the moral power of Protestantism would be vastly increased ; and we can easily conceive that, in many cases, the Protestant clergy would become more popular with the Roman Catholic peasantry than their own bishops and priests, if the latter should chance to bear “ the Castle brand.”
From these considerations, and others that might be adduced, if space permitted, I have arrived at the conclusion that the fears entertained by Protestants as to the results of the separation of the Church from the State in Ireland are chimerical, and that Ireland without a Church Establishment would be a more religious, a more united, a more peaceable, and a more prosperous country than ever it has been since the days of St. Patrick.
2L 2
510 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
CHAPTER XXV.
LAST year several of the Irish bishops felt it to be necessary to make the position of the Establishment the subject of their charges to their clergy. Their apologies did not produce much effect on public opinion in England. Its leading organ treated the charges like so many soap bubbles. The article is memorable, as it was supposed to pronounce the doom of the institution. The writer begins by remarking that, “When Irish bishops discuss the position of the Irish Establishment in their charges to the Irish clergy, it can be no longer necessary to apologize for entertaining the ques tion. When a Church is doubtful about her own position, statesmen and public writers may be excused for sharing in the hesitation ; and if bishops are uncertain whether it be for the general good that they should retain their revenues and authority, laymen cannot be expected to feel any greater degree of assurance. An institution must be in bad case when its own members and chief officers cannot speak with confidence in its favour, and such appears now to be the condition of the Irish Church. In our Dublin letter on Monday we were informed that three of the bishops, in charges recently delivered and published, have been seriously considering the probable fate of the Establishment. The Bishop of Killaloe, Dr. Fitzgerald, who holds a very high position on the Irish bench, has made this the principal subject of his charge. It may, perhaps, be thought signifi cant in more ways than one that a bishop should thus con sume the time of his clergy at his periodical visitation with a disquisition, upon the very foundations of their position. As we have said, it is a sign that they cannot feel very secure ; but it might also be thought some indication that
REMEDIP:S AND RECONCILIATION. 517
their pastoral occupations, which form the usual theme of a bishop’s charge, cannot be very engrossing. We cannot, however, profess any astonishment at this evidence of un easiness on the part of the leading Irish clergy. It is only surprising that they have not expressed such doubts and dissatisfaction before. It can hardly have needed either argument or public discussion to have raised such feelino-s. In the four dioceses over which the Bishop of Killaloe pre sides, the total population, according to our correspondent, is 355,079, while the Church population is but 15,905, the net income of the Established Church being £20,15-4. Any man with a sense of his duty, or even of his dignity, would have felt, one would have thought, not a little dissatisfied at such a position. The allegiance of one in twenty-three souls is a poor result to show for a bishop, a complete staff of cleroy, and £20,000 a year. It is, indeed, to a simple statement of such plain facts as these that the present feeling on the sub ject of the Irish Establishment is mainly due. It is only necessary for a bishop to open his eyes to bare statistics in order to appreciate the incongruity of his position. The Irish Establishment is an institution which, to be con demned, needs only to be seen. It is an establishment which is not established, and it is Irish only for the Hiber nian reason that it is intensely English, that it was origi nally conceived in deadly antagonism to Irish sentiment, and that it has been since upheld against the all but uni versal dissent of the Irish people. An Irish bishop has not, and never could have, any feeling that he is at home in Ireland. He is a bishop in the air ; he is supported, so to say, from behind, by a hand stretched out across the chan nel; but his feet have no standing ground ; he has no congre gation in whom to strike root. An archdeacon, said the late Bishop of London, performs archidiaconal functions. An Irish bishop performs episcopal functions. That is the ut most that can be said of him.
“So it is but natural that Dr. Fitzgerald and his two brother bishops .should have authoritatively joined their
518 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
voices to the general burden of discontent. So far they help to make a clear case the clearer ; but when they turn to the doubtful side of the question and attempt to suggest a solution for the difficulty, they share in the general failure. Almost everybody agrees respecting the Irish Church that something must be done, but scarcely anybody can give a distinct opinion what to do. Dr. Fitzgerald is singularly discouraging. He enumerates all the difficulties by which the Church is beset ; he thinks its establishment was an in evitable consequence of the Reformation ; he laments the mistakes made by English statesmen, but lie ( sees no way out of the present difficulties in any of the plans proposed.’ The endowment of the Roman Catholic priests, the volun tary system, the curtailment of the Establishment, and a re-distribution of its revenues, are alike rejected as imprac ticable or ineffectual expedients. He is aware that the bare existence of the Church constitutes ‘a sentimental grievance’ to Roman Catholics; but even for this sentimental hardship he sees no remedy except in ‘ a total revolution which should break the English connexion.’ This, it must be allowed, is a disheartening conclusion, and it is one which will hardly obtain a general assent. The bishop and his clergy, after sacrificing to justice by a frank acknowledgment of all the difficulties and anomalies we have enumerated, may be sensible of many inducements to acquiesce in. their position ; but when the sense of injustice is thus roused in other minds it will scarcely rest without at least seeking for some satisfaction. We discover, indeed, one ray of light, though rather implied than expressed in the bishop’s charge. All the other causes of the want of success of the Irish Church have been, he says, as nothing ‘in comparison with the fatal, blighting influence of the penal laws — laws framed appa rently for the express purpose of crushing down the Roman Catholic population into a state of hopeless poverty, igno rance, and discontent, and undying hostility to everything that bore the hateful name of English.’ No words, indeed, can be too hard for the penal laws ; and those who are sur-
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 519
prised at the rooted antipathy to England, which is still shown by some parts of the Irish nation, would do well to refresh their memories by a perusal of Burke’s tracts on the ‘Popery Laws,’ the facts detailed in which are certainly sufficient to explain a great deal of hereditary bitterness of feeling. But Dr. Fitzgerald appears to suggest that it was these laws which gave the edge of offensiveness to all Eng lish institutions, and to the Irish Church in particular ; and that, as they are now abrogated, we may expect that when the Church is presented to the people apart from such re pulsive accompaniments, it may meet with a more favourable reception. We are afraid experience has already pronounced against any such hope ; and, even if it had not, Dr. Fitzgerald would have overlooked one important consideration. The Established Church is itself the creation of the very spirit which, in its extreme development, gave birth to those in famous enactments. It is not, indeed, a penal law; 1m t it is, in a manner, a gigantic confiscation. It seizes the whole of
“ O CD
the ecclesiastical endowments of the country, and appro priates them to the use of a small minority, to a large extent of a foreign race and of an alien religion. In this theory, at all events, it is the chief remaining relic of the old into lerant policy. Such is the aspect in which, under its present condition, it must necessarily be viewed by Irish Roman Catholics. A practical grievance, as we have repeatedly urged, it is not ; but it is, as Dr. Fitzgerald puts it, a senti mental grievance ; and the sentiment inseparably connected with it is, unhappily, the same which was so deeply im planted by the penal laws. As matters now stand, the Establishment divested of its character of a grievance would be a knife without a blade. It was designed as a thorn in the sides of Roman Catholics, and the design has been abundantly successful.
“A similar fallacy vitiates the more hopeful proposals of the Bishop of Kilmore. He, too, would persuade us that the fault is not in the plant, but in the vicious husbandry to which it has been subjected. But the fault lies rather in
520 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
choosing such a plant for such a soil, and this is a radical vice of husbandry which no subsequent care can correct. We do not know that the Bishop is very fortunate in his comparison of Wales. The English Church has never been very strong in the Principality, and it is, perhaps, fortunate that the popular religion has not been a more aggressive system than Methodism. He puts in a novel and ingenious plea by urging that the English Church “ should understand what is due from the strong to the weak,” an argument by which it would follow that the feebler the position of the Irish Church the more vigorously it ought to be supported, and that it would never be more deserving of English care and attention than when its bishops and clergy were destitute of congregations. Such an argument reads like a plea of desperation. It seems as though the unfor tunate Establishment were to be deprived by the hands of its own friends of every leg on which it could stand. Some good Churchmen who, after the example of the Pope, have persuaded themselves that property once assigned to a Bishop becomes the inalienable heritage of his successors under all conceivable circumstances, had also flattered them selves with the belief that the Bishops of the present Establishment were the lineal successors of St. Patrick. The Irish Bishops, it Avas said, had conformed at the Refor mation, and the succession was unbroken. But Dr. Brady has, it is said, conclusively shown that this pleasant fancy is a mere dream, and that the Irish Bishops, like the Irish Church, are a pure English importation. In a word, there is no longer anything to be said in any quarter for the Irish Church except that it exists, and that 110 one knows what to do with it.”
Within the present year a piercing cry of alarm has come from the north of Ireland. 1 have already taken some notice of the Rev. James Byrne, ex-Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, examining chaplain to the Bishop of Deny, and incumbent of a very good living. He is the author of two of the papers in the volume of “ Essays on the Irish Church.”
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 521
They showed a good deal of independent thinking on Church matters for an Irish clergyman, and the late Viceroy re warded him with the title of Dean of Clonfert. Dean Byrne has now published a pamphlet on the Irish Church question, in the form of a letter, addressed to the Right Hon. AY. E. Gladstone, M.P., as “ the leading statesman of the day, who will probably exercise a principal influence in settling it.” Dean Byrne fears that the abolition of the Establishment is imminent, and he apprehends the most direful consequences from such an event.
The clergy of all denominations, he thinks, would be degraded if the State support given to faith were withdrawn. “ The degradation of the ministers of religion would degrade religion itself among the educated classes, and well-nio-h
O O (— ,
destroy its influence. Doubt would pass rapidly into un belief ; and, as infidelity spread, the obligations of morality would be relaxed. Irish nature, however, is religious; and in Ireland, probably, the principal result of a Protestantism in danger of passing into infidelity, would be to frighten less thoughtful Protestants into the Church of Rome. Such
cD
a movement, we know, arose in the Church of England about a generation ago as a reaction from liberalism, and it seems at present to have got a new impulse in a reaction from scepticism, or at least from the prevalent spirit of free inquiry ; but it is probable that in Ireland a much greater movement in the same direction would proceed from the spectacle of Protestantism, weak and cowering, and yielding to unbelief, when contrasted with Romanism rejoicing in. its strength. If the Establishment were abolished, all tin* Protestant communions would decline in strength, and the Church itself, exposed to special dangers, would languish and decay. Reason and faith, now held together by a clergy who constitute a learned profession, would tend to separate. Scepticism would be reinforced by the former, and Romanism by the latter, and the Church of Rome, triumphant over Protestant thought, would possess undisputed supremacy as the ruling Church of the country.
522 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
“ The Roman Catholic Church, triumphant and supreme, would represent to the Irish people the triumph and suprem acy of the native race ; for the fortunes of the two through centuries of national agony have been associated together. But the native race would still remain humbled and dis possessed; and Ireland, though apparently realizing its native tendencies and asserting its native rights, would still be in the hands of the stranger.”
Such fears for the faith when deprived of worldly sup port are unworthy of a Christian minister, who believes in the power of the Gospel. Dean Byrne would have the Estab lishment maintained on the present territorial principle ; but he is more liberal than many of his brethren, for he would consent to the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy ; and he concludes his appeal to Mr. Gladstone as follows : — “ Would it not then bo better, instead of destroying the Establishment, to reform in it whatever needs reform, and at the same time to extend State support to the other religious bodies, not as a bribe, nor on any conditions of political compliance, but simply and sincerely for the sake of justice and religion ? It is to be hoped that such a system would promote amongst us mutual respect, and would be the best corrective of religious intolerance, enabling us, though members of different communions, to dwell together in unity as Irishmen, and to work together harmoniously for the good of Ireland.”
The Times speaks of the Irish Establishment as ‘‘intensely English.” It is so in more senses than one. It is an English garrison planted in Ireland, and it was for ages, to a great extent, manned by Englishmen. The number of Englishmen who occupied sees in Ireland, from the accession of Elizabeth to our own time, is 123. Each of them, as a rule, brought over a number of their own relations, and placed them in stalls and parishes as they became vacant. In this way the Irish Church got a great hold on the English aristocracy, many of whom were near relations of its bishops and dignitaries ; and a still greater number
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 523
looked to it as a provision for younger sons, or for college tutors, who usually came over as Chaplains to the Lord Lieutenant.
We might be able to account for the fact that the bishops and incumbents of the Irish Establishment cannot see that its position is indefensible, either on the ground of Christian equity or sound policy ; for they are subject to various warping influences. There is the influence of material interest — of profitable monopoly — of the clerical profession — of a favoured caste. Even the curates are swayed by those influences almost as much as any others, because each one hopes some day to become a rector or a vicar, and if he lias talent, ambition, or family connexions, to become a dean, perhaps a bishop. But it is not so easy to account for the anomaly that the laity of the upper classes seem incurably blind to the plainest facts in connexion with the Establish ment, and that they are irritated if asked to reason upon the subject, with a view to reform. The peer or the country gentleman may quarrel with the rector of his parish, may refuse to attend his church, or visit him, or even to speak to him on the road, he may denounce his conduct, and assail his character ; but, however the clergyman may deserve censure, his lay critic cannot be brought to look upon him in any other light than a necessary evil. Owing to the nepotism of the bishops, and to the inflictions arising from the purchase of livings, the cause of the Church in certain well-endowed parishes may be all but ruined; Yet the gentry, who behold and privately bewail these things, will vehemently resist any attempt to change the system. If Members of Parliament, they will be at their posts to a man, to vote against any motion for the least reform of the most glaring abuses. I have before me notes on one of the most Protestant dioceses in Ireland by an incumbent of great ability, occupying one of the most prominent positions in it, and capable of adorning one much higher. The late bishop was an Englishman, one of the best of his class, praised by Archdeacon Cotton in the highest terms. He was an able
524 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and learned man, a zealous defender of the Establishment, and in the exercise of his patronage he acted under the fullest light of public opinion, in times when the Church was really in danger. In fact, if anywhere we should have looked for purity and disinterestedness in a bishop, it was here. This bishop had a brother, who was a captain or a major ; he ordained him, and made him an archdeacon. When the brother died the bishop appointed his own son, then a mere youth, to the vacant office. This archdeacon’s living lias been long sequestrated ; he has gone several times through the Insolvent Debtors’ Court. Owing to the pecuniary embarrassments in which he is continually in volved, and to other causes, one of the finest congregations in the country is scattered, and the cause prostrated — only a handful of people attending the church. The bishop ordained another son who had been in the navy, no higher than a middy, and gave him two livings in succession. “ He was glad,” says my correspondent, “to go to England on his father’s death, and lie has written and published a ridiculous account of himself as a middy, in which he describes most shamelessly his dishonest and mean tricks as such, when lie was scamping about the world.” The same bishop gave one of the most important parishes in the diocese to a gentleman who had married his niece, and on his death that parish was given as a marriage portion to his own sister, who was not very young. The parish had no reason to rejoice in the uses to which it was thus put, for it has been left in a deplorable condition. Another man was made rector of an important parish, it is said, because he had lent money either to the bishop or his son, the archdeacon ; he died after years of absenteeism. All these appointments were most disastrous to the best interests of the Church ; and be it remembered, that they occurred in a part of the country which the Rev. Dr. Hume’s religious map represents in the brightest colours; where Episcopalianisrn is in the most healthy condition, and under a bishop whom the historian of the Irish Church will describe as one of its greatest ornaments.
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION.
025
Now, “if these things be done in the green tree, what must be done in the dry ?” If this state of things is life and health, what is corruption ? The bishop in question only followed the example that had been set him by his two immediate predecessors. A similar record of spiritual deso lation, resulting from the nepotism and dishonesty of bishops, past or present, might be given for nearly every diocese in Ireland. Yet this is the ecclesiastical system which the bishops in their charges represent to be as faultless as the infirmities of human nature will permit. This is the system which Dean Byrne, in the name of orthodoxy, asks Mr. Gladstone to prop up by endowing the lloman Catholic priesthood — that is, if the priesthood would be so accommodating as to consent to prop up the fortress of Protestant ascendancy. Mr. Gladstone is not likely to ask them to do anything of the kind. He does not belong to the clerico-aristocratic caste of the Irish Establishment, and he can see Irish affairs in their true light. But why, it may be asked, cannot the Irish Protestant nobility and gentry do so as well ? This question I will now endeavour to answer.
According to the last Census there are 8,412 landed pro prietors of all ages in Ireland. Some of them are minors, and 2,623 are women. It is the boast of the defenders of the Establishment that seven-eighths of these are Protestants, members of the Anglican Church. Say, then, that the number of Protestant proprietors of all ages and sexes is 7,000. Now let- it be borne in mind that these 7,000 constitute the class from which the bishops and clergy of the Irish Establishment are, with few exceptions, taken. They enjoy seven or eight- tenths of the land of the country. In addition to their vast rental as landed proprietors, they have for their younger sons, brothers, sons-in-law, and all their kinsmen and kins women who marry clergymen, net revenues from the Church amounting to £477,008 a year. In addition to this we must note the fact, that there are many of those families of the Protestant nobility and gentry who were born in the lap of the Church, and have derived their whole support, and all their rank and wealth from this most generous “Nursing Mother.”
526 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
The total number of Bishops who ruled the Irish Church since its foundation by Queen Elizabeth, is 326 ; of these, 123, or more than one-third, were Englishmen, who came over as clerical adventurers or Viceroys’ chaplains to seek their fortunes, and generally they found, especially since the Revolution, a mine of wealth, with which many a poor family was made rich. I have taken the trouble of preparing a catalogue of all the Bishops, English and Irish, who were enabled by their incomes from the Irish Establishment to found families, whose representatives are still in existence. From this it will be evident that a large portion of the Irish nobility and gentry have ecclesiastical blood flowing in their veins, and that the 7,000 Episcopal proprietors are a sort of Levitical tribe, far better endowed than any other priestly order ever was in the history of the world. The date pre fixed refers to the last and highest appointment each Bishop received : —
PROVINCE OF ARMAGH.
1589. John Carvey, . Garveys, of Morisk, county Mayo, &c.
1595. Henry Ussher, . See below.
1624. James Ussher, . The collateral descendants of the two
Archbishops Ussher were the Usshers of Sail try, Donny brook, &c., county Dublin, of Mount Ussher, county Wicklow, and of Kilnieadon, county Waterford ; of which last family was Ussher, Lord St. George, now repre sented by the Duke of Leinster.
166^. John Bramhall, . Marquis of Hastings and Earl of Lime rick, the descendants of the Arch bishop’s daughters, and the co-heirs of their brother, Sir Thomas Bram hall, hart.
1663. James Margetsoiij. Earl of Bessborough : Primate Marget-
son’s granddaughter, Sarah, m. Brah- azon Ponsonby, Viscount Duncannon.
167|. Michael Boyle, . (His issue, the Viscounts Blesinton,
extinct.)
170|-. Narcissus Marsh, . The Proby family, in the female line.
1765. Bichard Robinson, Lord Rokeby (collateral descendant). Lord Rokeby.
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 527
1795. William Neweome, The Wallers, of Allenstown, county
Heath; the Nicholsons, of Balrath, in the same county ; and Sir Richard Musgrave, bart., spring from Arch bishop Newcome’s daughters.
1800. Hon. Wm. Stuart, William Stuart, esq., of Aldenham
Abbey, Herts.
1661. John Leslie, . Col. Chas. Powell Leslie, of Glasslough,
county Monaghaii.
1672. Roger Boyle, . The Vigors family (by female collateral
connexion).
1717. John Stearne, . The Steariie-Tighes, of Westmeath (by
female descent).
1745. Robert Clayton, . The Browne-Claytons, of the county
Wexford, are collateral descendants.
1782. Sir John Hotham, Lord Hotham (collateral), bart.
1796. William Foster, . William Yesey Leslie Foster Yesey Fitz
gerald, esq.
1798. John Porter, . Rev. John Grey Porter, of Kilskcry,
county Fermanagh.
1822. Lord R. P. Totten- The present Col. Charles John Totten ham, ham, of Woodstock, county Wicklow, and of Berwyii House, co. Denbigh.
1563. Hugh Brady, . TheBRADYS,of Tomgraiiey and Raheens,
county Clare.
1605. Roger Dodd, . His daughters and co-heirs, viz. — Mar
garet, wife of John Greenham, esq., of Tonnagh, county C avail, and Abi gail, wife of Thomas Moigiie, Bishop of Kilmore.
16V?. Geo. Montgomery, The Earl of Howth, K.P. (through the
marriage of Bishop Montgomery’s only daughter and heir with his an cestor, Nicholas, Lord Howth).
1625. Antony Martin, . Richard Martin, esq., of Coimemara,
couiitv Galway, M.P., was a collateral descendant.
166°. Henry Leslie, . Robert Charles Leslie-French, esq., of
Ballibay House, county Monaghan, as heir-general, and James Edmund Leslie, esq., of Leslie Hill, county Antrim, as heir male.
1697. Richard Tennisoii, Edward King Tenison, esq., of Kilronan
Castle, county Roscommoii.
1705. William Horeton, The family of Moreton, of Little More- ton, county Chester.
1731. Welbore Ellis, . Yiscount Clifden and the Earl of Nor-
manton.
528
IRELAND AND HER CHURCH US.
17G6. 1823.
1850. 1852. 1GGO.
161S. 17H. 17H.
Hon. H. Maxwell, Lord Farnham, K.P.
Nathl. Alexander, Nathaniel Alexander, esq., of Portgle-
noiie House, county Antrim.
Edward Stopford, His sons, James Stopford, LL.D., Edward A. Stopford, Archdeacon of Meath, and Thomas Adderley Stopford, rector of Cloiiegal. His lordship’s children. His lordship’s sons.
Mossom, of Mount Eland, county
T. Stuart Townsend, J. H. Singer, Robert Mossom, .
Michael Ward, John Hartstonge, . St. George A she, .
1747. William Barnard,
1768. Hon. Frederick A.
Hervey (Earl of
Bristol).
180.°). Hon. Win. Knox, 1831. Hon. R. Ponsonl>y,
171’). K icholas Forst ; T, . 1747. Philip Twysdeii, .
1780. James Hawkins, . 1593. Ed\vd. Edgeworth, 161*. Robert Echlin, .
IGG^. Jeremy Taylor,
Kilkenny ‘?
Viscount Bangor (by collateral female descent).
The Earl of Limerick (by female collateral descent).
Sir St. George Gore, bart., of Manor Gore, county Donegal, as heir general of the bishop’s only daughter, Eliza beth, wife of Sir Ralph Gore, M.P.
The lato William Henry Barnard, esq., of Mohara, county Deny, and the late Sir Henry Francis Barnard, Go vernor of Chelsea Hospital.
Lord Howard de Waklen, as heir gene ral, and the Marquis of Bristol, as heir male.
Thomas George Iviiox, esq.
The late Lord Ponsonby ; now the children of his lordship’s sisters.
Sir George Forster, bart., of Coolderry, co. Monaghan, collateral male heir.
The Earl of Jersey, by descent from Frances, daughter and heir of Bishop Twysden, and wife of George Bussey, fourth Earl of Jersey.
Sir St. Vincent Keeiie Hawkins- Whit- shed, bart.
The Edgeworths, of Edgeworthstown, co. Longford, collateral heirs male.
Rev. John Robert Echlin, M.A., of Ard- quiii, county Down ; Arthur Wil- loughby Stafford, esq., and the Baro nets Echlin, of Glonard.
Francis Marsh, esq., of Springmount, Queen’s county, and his cousin, Sir Henry Marsh, bart. (descended from Jeremy Taylor’s daughter, Mary, wife of Francis Marsh, Archbishop of Dublin).
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION.
529
1691. Edward Smyth, .
172?. Fras. Hutchinson,
1765. James Trail,
164f. Robert Maxwell, .
168*. William Sheridan,
1693. William Smyth,
Essex Digby,
1683. 1745. 1612.
1819.
Capel Wiseman, . George Marlay, Thomas Moygne, .
James Saurin, Joseph Story,
1802. G.delaPoerBeres- ford.
1692. Ulysses Burgh,
1611. 1639.
1667. 169*.
Edward King, Henry Tilson,
John Hodson, Simon Digby,
Lord Dunsandleand Edward Skeffington Randal Smyth, esq., of Mount Henry, Queen’s county.
Sir Edward Synge Hutchinson, bart., (collateral male heir).
William Traill, of Ballylough, county Antrim, (collateral male heir).
Lord Farnham, K.P.
(Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan was a kins man of Bishop Sheridan).
Robert Smyth, esq., of Gaybrook, county Westmeath, and his kinsman, William Barlow Smythe, esq., of Barba villa, same county.
The Digbys of Landenstown, county Kildare ; also Edward Essex Digby Boycott, esq. ; Kenelm Henry Digby, esq., of Kensington, etc.
Sir William S. Wiseman, bart., (colla teral male heir).
Charles Brinsley Marlay, esq., of Bel vedere, county Westmeath.
One of his daughters and co-heirs, Dorcas Moigne, in. Samuel Townley, esq., of Drumrusk, county Louth.
The Saurins of the county Dublin.
Joseph Story, esq., of Bingfield, county Cavaii, and his cousin, James Story, esq., of Relagh Lodge, county Tyrone.
George de la Poer Beresford, esq., and his uncle, the present Primate Beres ford.
The Burghs of Dromkeen, county Limerick; the Burghs of Bert (an cestors of Lord Dowries) ; and the Burghs of Oldtown, county Kildare (of whom was the Right Hon. Walter Hussey Burgh).
Sir Gilbert King, bart., of Charlestown, county Roscomnion.
The eventual heiresses of the Bishop were two sisters — Hannah Georgiana, wife of Arthur Magan, esq., of Clon- earl, King’s county ; and Eliza A line, wife of Charles, Lord Castlecoote.
Sir George Hodson, bart., of Holly- brooke House, county Wicklow.
(See supra, under Essex Digby, his father, Bishop of Dromore.) 2 M
530
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
17M. Robert Howard,
1795. John Law, .
1810. John Leslie,
1595. Neh. Donnellaii,
167f. John Vesey, . 1716. Edward Synge,
174^. Josiah Hort, 1782. Hon.J. D. Bourke, (Third Earl of Mayo), .
1794. Hon.W.Beresford, 1819. Hon. P. Trench, .
1839. Thomas, Lord Plun-
ket. 1759. Sam. Hutchinson,
The Earl of Wicklow.
Earl of Ellenborough (descended from the Bishop’s younger brother).
Rev. Charles Leslie.
The Donelans of Bally Donelan, county Galway ; the Donelans of Hillswood, same county, of Sylane, &c.
Viscount de Vesci, of the late Lord FitzGerald and Yesey ; the Yeseys of Lucan, county Dublin, &c.
The Coopers of Markree Castle, county Sligo (by female heirship) ; the Synge Hutchinsoiis, barts. ; and the Synges of Leslee Court, county Cork, barts., in the male line.
Sir Josiah William Hort, bart.
The Earl of Mayo.
Lord Decies.
The co-heiresses of the late Rev. William
Trench, viz. — -HARRIET ANNE, m. to
Henry William Meredyth, esq. ; and
SAKAH. His daughters, as heirs general ; his
brother, Lord Plunket, as heir male. Sir Edward Synge Hutchinson, bart.
(through the female line).
THE PROVINCE OF DUBLIN.
1567. Adam Loftus,
1605. Thomas Jones, 1619. Lancelot Bulkeley,
167f. John Parker, 1682. Francis Marsh, .
1741. Charles Cobbe, .
1765. Hon. William Car-
michael.
1766. Arthur Smyth, .
The Marquis of Ely (in the female line) and Lieut. -Colonel William James Loftus, as male heir.
Viscount Ranelagh.
His son, Sir Richard Bulkeley, of Old Bawn, was created a baronet of Ire land 1672, a title now extinct.
The families of Kelly of Tobbervaddy and Kellybrook, county Roscommon, heirs general.
Francis Marsh, esq., of Spring-mount, Queen’s county, arid his cousin, Sir Henry Marsh, bart.
Charles Cobbe, esq., of Newbridge, county Dublin.
Sir Windham Carmichael Anstruther, bart., heir general.
Viscount Gort, collateral descendant.
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION.
531
1772. John Cradock, .
1779. Robert Fowler,
1801. Charles Agar,
1822. William Magee, .
1831. Richard Whately,
1804. Charles Lindsay, .
1714. Sir T. Vesey, bart.,
1731. Edward Tennison,
1740. Antony Dopping, .
1799. Hugh Hamilton, .
1813. Robert Fowler, .
169?. Earth. Vigors, .
1605. Thomas Rani,
1782. Walter Cope,
1589. Richard Meredyth,
1623. Malcolm Hamilton,
1795. Richard Marlay, .
1813. Hon. Rd. Bourke,
1663. Edward Synge, .
1699. Dive Dowries,
1794. Hon. T. Stopford, 1831. Samuel Kyle,
1638. George Synge,
Lord Howden.
Robert Fowler, esq., of Rahenston and
Rathmolyoii, county Meath. Earl of Normanton. The Dean of Cork. His children. George Hay ward Lindsay, esq., of
Glasnevin, county Dublin. Viscount de Vesci. Thomas Joseph Tcnison, esq., of Port
Neligau, county Armagh. Doppiiigs of Lowtowu, co. Westmeath. The late Alexander Hamilton, esq.,
Q.C., of ISTewtown-Haniilton, county
Dublin. Robert Fowler, esq., of Rahinston and
Rathmolyon, county Meath. Henry Rudkin. Vigors, esq., of Ermdale,
county Carlo w, and John Cliffe Vi gors, esq. , of Burgage, county Carlow. Stephen Ram, esq. of Ramsfort, county
Wexford. The Archdalls, who took the name of
Cope. Sir Edward Meredyth, bart., of Greeii-
hills, county Kildarc ; and Sir Henry
Meredyth, bart., of Carlandstown,
county Meath. in the male line; and
Lord Athlunmey, in the female. The extinct Lords Gleiiawly, and the
extinct Counts Hamilton of Sweden. His nephew was the Right Hon. Henry
Grattan. Earl of Mayo. Sir Samuel Synge Hutchinson, bart. ;
and Sir Edward Synge, bart., of
Leslee, Arc. The late Lord Dowries, in the male
line ; and Ulysses Burgh, Lord
Downes, in the female. The Earl of Courtown, collaterally. Veil. Samuel Moore Kyle, Archdeacon
of Cork ; William Cotter Kyle, esq.,
LL.D. ; and the other children of the
Bishop. The Coopers of Markree, county Sligo,
heirs in the female line ; Sir Samuel
Synge Hutchinson, bart., male heir. 2 M 2
532
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
1694. William Palliser, . 17-3& Theophilus Bolton,
1744. Arthur Price,
1754. Michael Cox,
1801. Charles Brodrick,
1822. Richard Laurence,
1839. Stephen C. Sandes,
16i§. Michael Boyle, .
1753. James Stopford, .
1780. George Chinnery, .
1826. John Brinkley, .
16 If. John Ryder,
166?. Edward Worth,
174|. Nicholas Synge, 1627. Robert Dawson, 1626. Francis Gough,
1695. Thomas Smyth, . 1784. Wm. Cecil Pery,
(Baron Glent-
woith). 182*. John Jebb, .
Wray Palliser, esq., of Denyluskan, county Tipperary.
Rev. Archer Olive, of Whitfield, county Hereford (by female collateral heir- ship) ; and Chichester Fortescue Bol ton, Esq., of Tullydoimell, county Louth, collateral male heir.
Families of Vigors and Travers.
Sir Hawtrey Cox, bart.
Viscount Midleton.
His daughters and co-heirs, one of whom, Mary Vaughan, m. Veil. Archdeacon Cotton, author of “ The Fasti.”
His children.
The Earls of Cork and Shannon (col laterally).
James Butler Stopford, esq., of Danes- fort, county Cork.
Sir Nicholas Chinnery, bart., of Flint- field, county Cork, collateral male heir.
Richard Graves Briuckley, esq., of Fortland, county Sligo.
The Ryders of Riverstown House, county Kildare.
Rev. Edward Henry Newenham, of Coolmore, county Cork, heir by female descent, through the marriage of his ancestor, William Ncweiiham, esq., of Coolmore, in 1720, with Dorothea, daughter and heiress of Edward Worth, Barou of the Exchequer, the Bishop’s eldest son.
Sir Samuel Synge Hutchinson, bart. ; Edward Synge, esq., of Syngefield ; Sir Edward Synge, bart., etc.
His brother’s descendant, Robert Peel Da\vson, esq., M.P., of Moyola Park, county Deny.
George Gough, esq., of Woodstown, county Tipperary; -General Gough, and Viscount Gough, &c.
Viscount Gort (in the female line).
Earl of Limerick.
His nephew, Rev. John Jebb, Prebendary of Hereford.
D.D.,
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 533
1830. Hon. Ed. Knox, . Edmund Dalrymple Knox, Archdeacon
of Killaloe.
1600. John Crosbie, . Sir William “Richard Crosbie, bart. ;
James Crosbie, csq., of Bally lieigiie, county Kerry ; the Crosbies, Earls of Glandore and Barons Brandon ; and William Talbot Crosbie, esq., of Ard- fert Abbey, county Kerry.
We thus see that 127 bishops — a third of the whole number, realized estates and founded families, many of which have entered the ranks of the nobility — the great object of the Irish Churchman’s ambition. When we consider how their families have intermarried from age to age among the rest of the nobility and landed gentry, and how numerous and ramified are their relations with the rulino1 families of Eno--
O C5
land and Scotland, we begin to understand the real nature of the Irish Church difficulty — why Lord Melbourne and Lord Grey were paralyzed when they grappled with it; how closely the Irish Church question and the Irish Land ques tion are bound up together ; and how impossible it is to settle one without the other. Finally, we sec how hopeless it is to effect a settlement without Parliamentary reform. There is scarcely one of our Protestant representatives that has not the blood of bishops or dignitaries flowing in his veins, and who does not instinctively cling to the Estab lishment as the appanage of his order.
Appeals have been made to the British Legislature on behalf of the Irish Catholics, and made in vain, which I verily believe would have melted the stern fanaticism of Turks if made by Greeks. In the Appendix to the first Report on Public Instruction, such facts as the following were given in evidence, The Roman Catholic places of worship were generally thatched cabins, many of them in a dilapidated condition. Mr. D. Browne, M.P., stated that on festivals, such as Christmas or Easter, he had seen from ten to fifteen times as many people kneeling outside on the road as the chapel could contain. Colonel Currey, agent to the Duke of Devonshire, stated “ that the places of worship on his Grace’s property were very wretched thatched chapels,
534 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
so irregular in the line of their roof that they looked like several cabins joined together.” The Duke, as might be ex pected, gave orders that where the people exerted themselves to get better buildings his agent should aid them liberally. But the people were so poor that little could be done. The Rev. M. Collins, P.P. of Skibbereen, stated that he had a chapel which was so decayed that it was in danger of tumbling down on the people. It could hold only 1,000 persons ; but his congregation at each of two masses on Sunday was 2,000. He said — “ You may see them, in severe weather and under the pelting of storms, with their hats off, kneel ing in the mud.” The Earl of Kingston corroborated this testimony, saying — “ There is not room for one-third of the congregation. Anybody travelling through Ireland on a Sunday will see them kneeling all about the chapel yards, and in the streets. They have no means to build.”
The Most Rev. Dr. Kelly, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, stated before the same Commissioners, “ that there were in the archdiocese fifteen or eighteen slated chapels, arid eight or ten in progress; the remainder of 10G places of worship were wretched thatched cabins, none of them suffi ciently capacious to contain the congregation, and in many places the public prayers were celebrated in the open air, having no covering but the canopy of heaven.” This prelate, who had been very much engaged in the erection of chapels, added further, “that they had for that purpose 110 funds what ever except the voluntary contributions of the faithful, with those of the clergy and bishops, and the aid they received from Protestants. He did not recollect an instance of his being refused a subscription by a Protestant gentleman.” In reply to a question, Archbishop Kelly said : — “ I know of no act that would give the Catholic population of Ireland so much satisfaction as to see that there was some arrange ment for the erection of houses of worship for them.”
Yet, with an overwhelming mass of facts like these before it, the House of Commons never, from that day to this, voted one shilling for the erection of suitable places of worship for these poor subjects of the Queen, while it voted from the
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 535
Imperial exchequer millions for the purposes of the Estab lished Church, and in particular for the erection of Protestant churches, without people to occupy a third or a fourth of their sittings, the attendants being generally only the gentry and their families. Yet the sons of the peasants who were thus left kneeling in the mud, under the canopy of heaven, exposed to rain and storm, which symbolized but too truly the spirit of their pitiless rulers, are now expected to be loyal, and to deliver the Fenians into the hands of British justice ! The hearts of those people might have been won to the Throne, by restoring to their bishops some of those cathedrals taken from them at the Reformation, and allowed to fall into ruin. And why was this not done ? Simply because of the pride, selfishness, and bigotry of the ruling caste — because of the utterly un-Christian spirit of Protestant ascendancy — which so perverted men’s minds that they could not be got to do as they would be done by — because they could never forgive those whom they had wronged, and cloaked their implacable hatred under the pretext of zeal for Protestantism and religious liberty. The Whiteboys occa sionally carded their victims — a frightfully barbarous punish ment. But what has been the policy of the Irish Government towards the Homan Catholic Church ? A system of political carding. Emancipation put a stop to this cruelty ; but can it be so soon forgotten ? The wounds may be healed, but the stigma remains.
The evils of this policy were aggravated by breach of faith. This has been pointed out by the Times, in a review of Mr. Jesse’s “ History of the Reign of George III.”* “ In 1798, at the very crisis of the war with France, an insurrec tion broke out in Ireland, which was only suppressed after great bloodshed, and which placed the empire in real danger. Pitt made this the occasion of promoting a Union between Great Britain and Ireland as necessary to the safety of the State, and he wished to accompany this great reform by two measures which he justly believed were of vital moment to Irish interests — a State provision for the Catholic priesthood, * January 3, 1867.
536 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
and the emancipation of the Irish Catholics. A majority of the Cabinet approved this policy, put forward as a compre hensive scheme for settling Ireland upon a new basis ; the King unquestionably was aware of it, and the support of the Irish Catholics to the Union was obtained on an understand ing at least that its supplements, so important to them, were to be an integral part of it. But when, after the Union had passed, Pitt tried to accomplish the rest of his plan, the King absolutely refused to consent, on a scruple about his Coronation oath, and declared that he would rather forfeit his throne than make the least concession to justice. As is well known, the results were that the Catholics of Ireland were betrayed, and saw their hopes indefinitely deferred ; that Pitt was driven from office, and resigned the care of the empire at a crisis of its fate to a politician of the third class ; and that an opportunity, never since regained, was lost for removing, in part at least, the numerous ills that afflict Ireland.”
I think that Earl Grey was perfectly correct in stating in his speech last session that no arguments will ever convince the Irish people that they were not grievously wronged when “ England and the Irish dependents on the English power, contrary to the wishes of the Irish nation, transferred the property of the Irish Church to a Protestant clergy •” while the clergy, “ from whom alone the great bulk of the nation will receive the offices of religion, have been left, without any State provision, to be maintained by their flocks out of the contributions, with difficulty spared, from their extreme poverty ; while the clergy of a small minority, almost ex clusively of the richer classes, have enjoyed the magnificent endowment of which the Roman Catholics have been de prived. To make this injustice the more glaring, the Presby terians, though they are equally Dissenters in the eye of the law, and far better able than the Roman Catholics to take the burden upon themselves, receive a yearly grant from the Imperial Parliament for their clergy “
“ The Roman Catholics of Ireland therefore believe, and have irresistible grounds for believing, that a gross injustice
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 537
is done to them by maintaining the present appropriation of Church property; and if we look back to the history of Ireland, we shall find that nothing has been omitted to exasperate the deep and bitter feeling which injustice, long persevered in, never fails to create. Before the Union they were treated upon this subject with what seems to have been a wanton insolence of wrontr.”
£3
Individually, English and Irish Protestants are often most generous, and in seasons of famine they have been liberal in their contributions. But the policy of the State towards Catholic Ireland is something so unmitigably ;ind inexorably unjust, that it seems impossible to understand it, except on the principle that the Tory party has been smitten with the mania of George III. How else can we account for the obduracy with which Parliament refused to help the im poverished millions of the Irish population to shelter during their public worship of God? The British Government would have pitied Hindoo worshippers under such circum stances, but the Protestants of this country never could be got to regard the Irish Catholics as Christians of “ their own flesh arid blood.” We have dearly paid for our scruples or our bigotry in the chronic dissatisfaction of the Roman Catholic population, which it has cost so much to keep down. And now if we were to take the new ecclesiastical buildings — churches, colleges, monasteries, and nunneries which lift high their towers and spires in almost every Irish town — as the visible expression of the feeling of the hierarchy towards the Protestant Establishment, it would be this, — “ You have kept us down as long as you could by your iniquitous laws and your cruel social exclusion, maintained under the name of Protestant ascendancy. As long as you were able, you held us prostrate in the dust, trampling upon us, mocking us, and heaping upon us contumely and scorn. We have risen to our feet in spite of you. We have struck off our fetters — broken our manacles ; we have recovered our political rights, we have obtained wealth, and power, and influence, having had to struggle against your strenuous and unre lenting opposition at every step of our upward progress. We
538 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
owe you nothing but the hostility, the seeds of which your un- Christian oppression has sown in our hearts. Therefore, we will get above you if we can, and make you feel our superiority, not only in our numbers and political power, but in those architectural monuments which display that superiority to the eye of the world, and proclaim that if you are the Church of the State, you are scornfully disowned and repudiated by the nation.
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 539
CHAPTER XXVI.
THOSE who maintain that the Church Establishment is no grievance to Roman Catholics, or only a sentimental one, take a very shallow view of the subject. It is true, that the Roman Catholic farmer would have to pay as much for his land if there were no tithes, and therefore the Establish ment is no material burden. It takes no bread out of his mouth ; “ but man does not live by bread alone.” Nations have feelings and passions as well as individuals. Can any one have attentively read the history of this country with out perceiving that there is a spirit in the nation, which, though susceptible of the deepest wounds, could never be killed ? Can any one have thoughtfully read the history of the world without learning that what are called by econo mists sentimental grievances — things which they cannot tabulate, which they cannot express by statistics, have kindled devastating wars, impoverished kingdoms, and demolished thrones ? The Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot put the sentimental grievances in his budget ; but he will often find that the results brought about by despising or ignoring those grievances will add greatly to the burdens of taxation, and necessitate the maintenance of large military forces to suppress insurrection, while the tranquillity and confidence required for national prosperity are hopelessly repelled. We may do much for a conquered and oppressed people ; but all will fail to produce reconciliation if we omit the one thing needful — equality of races and Churches in the eye of the Government and the law. Indeed, the con cession of other things may but increase the perils of the State. The late Bishop Doyle warned the British Govern ment of this danger. In a letter on the “Conciliation of Ireland” he said — “One of the principal Secretaries of State has said, in his place in Parliament, that every means of tranquillizing Ireland had been tried, Catholic Emancipa-
540 IRELAND AND HEK CHURCHES.
tion alone excepted, and to that measure he was not then prepared to yield his assent. The head of the Government in the Upper House has deliberately declared that, in his opinion, the admission of the Roman Catholics to the privi leges of the constitution would only aggravate the evils of the country. These personages are manifestly at a loss how to conduct the interests of Ireland. They must be aware that the whole body of the Catholics are impatient, that their pride and interests are wounded, that disaffection must be working within them, if they be men born and nurtured in a free state, and yet enslaved. These ministers of the Crown must know that the mind of a nation, fettered and exasperated, will struggle and bound, and when a chasm is opened will escape by it in a torrent like lava from the crater of a volcano. They are themselves preparing fuel for the flame in Ireland ; they are educating the people without providing for their distress, and thus putting the sharpest weapons into the hands of men, \vho, as they learn to read, will also learn to calculate their strength, and to devise and meditate on schemes of retaliation and revenge. They will riot pacify the country, or induce the absentees to retivrn, or the resident gentry to abide here in peace ; by-and-by there will be no link of connexion between, the Government and a zealous, if not disaffected people. The ministers of the Establishment, as it exists at present, are and will be detested by those who differ from them in religion; and the more their residence is enforced, and their number multiplied, the more odious they will become. This may seem a paradox in England, but whosoever is acquainted with the oppression arising from tithes and church-rates, and with the excessive religious zeal which has always characterized the Irish, will freely assent to this truth, however strange it may appear.
“ The minister of England cannot look to the exertions of the Catholic priesthood ; they have been ill-treated, and they may yield for a moment to the influence of nature, though it be opposed to grace. This clergy, with few ex ceptions, are from the ranks of the people ; they inherit their feelings ; they are not, as formerly, brought up under
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 541
despotic governments ; they have imbibed the doctrines of Locke and Paley more deeply than those of Bellarmiii, or even of Bossuet, on the divine right of kings ; and they know much more of the principles of the constitution than they do of passive obedience.”
It is true that since this was written Catholic Emancipa tion has been granted. And what did that measure do ? It admitted a few Catholic gentlemen into Parliament, and raised a number of Catholic lawyers to the bench. But it left the priests and their nocks, without whom those men were nothing, just as it found them, while it abolished the forty-shilling franchise, which alone gave the people any consideration with their landlords. It is true also that provision has since been made for the poor, a measure for which Dr. Doyle powerfully contended ; but the poor-rate is levied off the occupiers of the land, and useful as that provision was, it still left the cultivators of the soil at the mercy of an unsympathizing aristocracy. For Cromwell’s alternative, “ Hell or Connauglit,” the law presented another — “ Hell or the workhouse.” “ Hell or emigration” is now the favourite alternative — the blessings of exile being de picted in heavenly colours ; and if America is not heaven, it is, at the worst, a sort of purgatory ; but, like that region, it leaves spirits free to come back, and trouble the repose of those in this world who were anxious to get rid of them, hauntino- their old homes under the name of Fenians.
O
Again, it is true that the atrocious tithe-proctor system has been abolished ; for the sake of the Protestant clergy, quite as much as the Roman Catholic people, that obnoxious im post has been converted into a rentcharge. But it is still paid to the landlords by the Roman Catholic tenant-formers, and the proceeds still go to the clergy of one-eighth of the population, embracing nearly all the wealthier portion.
These changes have all ameliorated the condition of Ireland more or less ; yet they have left untouched the seat of the disease. The State doctors have taken off the blister, but they have continued the blood-letting. They have left still, in all their force, such contrasts as
542 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
I witnessed on Palm Sunday last year, within twenty- eight miles of the metropolis, in one of the richest counties in Ireland — contrasts which may be seen in a still more glaring form in other parts of the island. In. the parish church of Navan I found a Sunday school of about a dozen children. The congregation was very small, consisting of the few families of gentry in the neighbourhood, but without any attendance that could be called the people from town or country. No small shopkeepers, no farmers, no workmen, no poor. The parochial duty is done by the incumbent, a gentle man who rejoices in a beard of which the grandest swell in Hyde-park might be proud, for it was developed over his breast in truly patriarchal dimensions, though happily not yet patriarchal in colour. For this congregation, so pre-emi nently select and genteel, the State makes the handsome provision of £435 net per annum. ‘ The Roman Catholic church, situated within a stone’s-throw, is a building of immense magnitude, a square pile, in what may be called the Grecian style of architecture, the Gothic being the fashion now in Ireland among all denominations. Beside the church stands a lofty tower, which is seen at a great distance, and overtops the tower of the Protestant church. The principal front is still unfinished, although it was opened in 183G. On the three compartments of the front Avail, faced with cut stone, is the inscription : —
« Deo Max Opt.”
A few yards from the church there is erected a well- executed large stone cross, the work of a native artist, having on one side an image of the crucified Saviour, with the letters, “ I.N.RI.,” and on the opposite an image of the Virgin, with the inscription, “ Stabat Mater.” The church presents the appearance of a vast hall, capable of containing 5,000 or 6,000 persons, and surrounded by galleries. It gives one the idea of a large town-hall, or free-trade hall, or a great music-hall, suited for public meetings where any number of people might promenade freely, while listening to oratory or music. The floor is boarded, but there are no seats, except a few forms at each end. One side of the building is occu-
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 543
pied by three altars, the centre one dedicated, of course, to the Saviour, the one to the right to the Sacred Heart, and the one to the left to the Virgin Mother, whose statue was completely covered with mourning, this being the com mencement of Passion Week. Three times on Sunday fore noon Mass is celebrated in this building for three successive congregations. After the main body of the congregation had departed, there was a large number remaining — some hundreds — mostly women and young persons, the majority having about them the marks of deep poverty, while some were labouring under various infirmities. At each end, near the minor altars, a considerable number were engaged in their devotions; but the majority were standing crowded in front of the great altar, and pressing forward eagerly towards two priests in their robes, busily engaged distributing the blessed palm to the people, which was thankfully and de voutly received by them. It was impossible not to admire the kind and considerate manner in which this task was silently performed by the priests, and the earnest faith and humility of the recipients.
I have been favoured by the Rev, A. Cogan, Dean of the Seminary of Navan, with the following statistics : — In 1800 there was a humble, unpretending chapel at Navan, since taken down ; no convent; no seminary. In 1866 there is a church, which with bell-tower, cross, and ecciesiastica 1 furniture, cost £7,600, a parochial residence, £1,200 ; Loretto convent, £6,400 ; Convent of Mercy, £1,500 ; diocesan seminary, £5,500 ; Catholic Young Men’s Society lecture hall, £700 — making a total of £22,900. The parochial churches of Mullingar, Navan, Kells, Athboy, and Kelskyre collectively cost the sum of £34,000. Since 1800, 144 parochial churches have been erected in the diocese — exclusive, of course, of workhouse and convent chapels — at a cost, in cluding parochial residences, of £200,000.
Now while the imperial rulers of the country have done everything for the accommodation and comfort of the small congregation of gentry and their families, they have done nothing for the mass of the poor people, whose hardly-spared
544 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
pence have erected these buildings. However Protestants may deplore the fact, the devotion and tenacity with which the mass of the Irish population cling to their Church and their clergy, under all their privations and at whatever cost, are phenomena well calculated to excite admiration and sympathy, proving clearly that if the Government of the country is to win their confidence, and secure their attach ment, it cannot be clone by any attempts at alienating them from their pastors. And what is the character of these poor people whom the State refuses to recognise as Christians, hitherto requiring all its functionaries to swear against their creed as damnable ? Let a clergyman of the Established Church, a learned incumbent of the same diocese, answer.
The Rev. Dr. Orlando T. Dobbin has put forth a “ Plea for Tolerance towards our Fellow-Subjects in Ireland pro fessing the Catholic Religion.” After thirteen years’ residence among the peasantry he declares his conviction that they are among the most worthy people that England rules, and observes : — “ Most of the class who present themselves to my observation are marked by a sobriety and honesty, a truth fulness of speech, a kindness and helpfulness to one another, a patient, uncomplaining endurance of bitter poverty and privation, a thankful willingness to labour at any employ ment when employment can be had, and a submissive, trustful dependence upon Providence, with a habitual respect for the ordinances of religion, that are pleasing in the highest degree.”
With regard to their clergy, he says : — “ They are, for the most part, a very unobtrusive class — neither politicians, nor proselytizers, nor meddlers in any way with their neighbours of other creeds. They wish to hold their own — a very natural and not blameworthy wish. They look after their flock, after their dues, and, if lucky enough to have one, look after their farm, and give as little trouble, if not causelessly assailed, as any other class in the community. As a kind of spiritual police over the mauvais sujets of their own com munion, I believe their services to be invaluable to the peace of society. The loyalty of the Irish priesthood, with the
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 545
exception of a few factious priests here and there (usually soon silenced by their own bishops), admits of no question.”
Dr. Dobbin very earnestly deprecates the insulting attacks made upon, the religion of the mass of the people by the agents of the Irish Church Missions. He asks how would other denominations like to be attacked in the same way ? How would the Irish Protestants feel if those who are thus assailed should retaliate ‘?
The Irish Roman Catholics are considered unreasonable and perverse, because they are disaffected, or at least dis contented, on account of the Established Church. That is not the opinion of an English statesman, who, I think, Avas surpassed by no statesman of his time for the judicial cha racter of his mind, for the soundness of his political philosophy, for the clearness of his views, the extent and accuracy of his information, and his intense love of truth and justice. I refer to Sir George Corn e wall Lev/is. He says: — “ The Roman Catholics, who are a large majority, feel aggrieved that the State, having an ecclesiastical endowment at its disposition, should bestow it on a small minority of the Irish community. In this manner not only is the Church of the minority sup ported, while that of the majority is left unsupported, but that of the rich, minority is supported while that of the poor majority is left unsupported. Now, in fact, the Roman Catholics, though they may pay the tithe, contribute nothing, inasmuch as in Ireland tithe is in the nature, not of a tax, but of a reserved rent, which never belonged either to the landlord or the tenant. But the sense of ill-treatment in this respect by the State on the part of the Roman Catholics is wdl-foiindtd, though they may express it incorrectly. The true ground of complaint is that the State, having a certain endowment for ecclesiastical purposes at its disposal, selects one religious persuasion as the object of its favour, arid that one the persuasion of only a tenth part of the com munity. It is ever to be remembered in discussing the ecclesiastical state of Ireland, that the objections of the Roman Catholics to the Established Church of that country are not of more or less; that they would not be removed by
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54G IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the abolition of a few bishoprics, or the paring down of a few benefices, but that they lie against its very existence — against the principle of making a public provision in Ireland for the clergy of the small minority, so long as the clergy of the large majority is left wholly destitute of aid from the public funds. No improvements in the internal economy of the Established Church, in the distribution of its revenues, or the discipline of its clergy, tend to lessen the sense of grievance arising from this source. The effect of the preference in question is that the whole body of the Catholics in Ireland are more or less alienated from the Government — the author of their wrong — and are filled with jealousy and ill-will towards the more favoured Protestants. . . . All the ecclesiastical grievances of Ireland arise from what is termed the connexion between Church and State, which gives to one ecclesiastical society exclusive civil rights and privileges. The great principle which ought to serve as the basis of legislation in all ecclesiastical matters is that the State is no judge of the truth of creeds. In proportion as this principle has been violated, all ecclesiastical legislation has been mis chievous and oppressive. The religious persecutors of the fifteenth century were far more logical and consistent in their views than the half tolerant governments of the present day. They avowed the doctrine that the State was the judge of creeds, and carried their principle to its full and legitimate extent. They were prepared to hazard the safety and peace of kingdoms, in order to spread the true and only saving faith. Even Cromwell gave the Irish Catholics the alternative of hell or Connaught. Austria and Bohemia gave no such alternative to their Protestant subjects in the thirty years’ war. No Connaught was allowed to them, but they were expelled in thousands from the country. If this policy had been followed, and the English Government had been strong enough to enforce it, there would not now have been more Catholics in Ireland than there are Moors in Spain. The persecuting policy, when vigorously carried out, may be unjust and barbarous, but it is at least effectual ; but when irresolutely and timidly pursued and restrained by some
KEMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 547
sense of justice and mercy, it is a mere gratuitous infliction of pain; it disorganizes society, it debases the oppressed sect, it breeds up a malcontent and disaffected race, it en dangers the very existence of Government, and after all it does not effect its end.”‘1’
This is exactly what has been done in Ireland. A few words may be said here on the origin of the Church property, which Sir Cornewall LCAVIS truly observes belongs neither to the landlord nor the tenant, but which the landlord will ulti mately appropriate, if care be not taken to prevent him : — “ Reviewing the history of Church and State from the period of their union, it is impossible to avoid the conviction that rich benefices, and especially tithes, have been the bane of religion — that they were more hostile to Christianity, and more mischievous to the Church, than the darkness of paganism or the sword of the infidel. To the wealth of Churchmen — to the pride, and indolence, and luxury, and simony, and ambition which that wealth engendered — may be traced the decay of learning and piety, the corruption of morals, the scandals of popes and princes, their broils and contentions, the factions, the divisions, the schisms, the heresies which desolated the Church — as also many of those wars, which unceasingly throughout Europe exhibited a Christian people having their hands reeking with each other’s blood. Every departure from the spirit of the Gospel has brought woes unnumbered to the Church. In the time of Charlemagne, or the year 800, we find the Church and State everywhere combined in exacting tithes, and enforcing the payment of them with a power and rigour till then unknown in the Christian Church. Had the men who introduced this system foreseen the remote consequences of their own acts, in the luxury and corruption of Church men, in the spread of simony, in the decay of religion, in the tyranny of power, in the oppression of the weak, in the revolt of states, in the subversion of thrones and altars, and
* “ Irish Disturbances and the Irish Church Question.” By Sir G. C. Lewis, pp. 341, &c.
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548 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
in the contempt and hatred of kings and priests, they would never have allied the Church to the State, or sought by ecclesiastical censures or civil laws to render excessive and compulsory that provision for the clergy and the poor which the divine Author of our religion willed to be the fruit of
O
charity, or a just but voluntary return for services performed. But it is our duty at present to lament rather than condemn, to amend or alter rather than inveigh against, a mode of proceeding which perhaps the necessities of the time justified. We come at length to the examination of the state of Church
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property in Ireland — the only Christian country which enjoyed, up to the period of the English invasion, a total exemption from tithe. I say a total exemption ; for though some attempts to introduce the system had been made by Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick, and by St. Malachy of Armagh, who were invested with a legatine commission from the Pope ; and though these attempts were renewed by Cardinal Paparo, An. 1152, in the Synod of Kells, they were, it might be said, totally ineffectual. The Irish people, since their first conversion to the Christian faith, always understood rightly the Gospel dispensation. They were always too rational and too acute to submit willingly to an unreason able, I might add an unjust, imposition ; and the law of tithe, whether civil or ecclesiastical, has never had, either in Catholic or Protestant times — no, not to the present hour — the assent or consent of the Irish nation/’ This powerful sketch of the tithe system and its effects is not from the pen of some eloquent assailant of the Church of Home. It is the production of a Roman Catholic prelate whom the greatest statesmen of his time, including the present Earl of Derby, then Chief Secretary of Ireland, consulted with respect and deference — the celebrated Bishop Doyle.
“ There are,” he continues, “ many noble traits in the Irish character, mixed with failings which have always raised obstacles to their own well-being; but an innate love of justice, and an indomitable hatred of oppression, is like a gem upon the front of our nation which no darkness can
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obscure. To this fine quality I trace their hatred of tithe : may it be as lasting as their love of justice !”*
Dr. Doyle proceeds to prove that there was a tripartite division of the tithes— one-third to the Bishop and his assistants for their support, if not otherwise sufficiently endowed ; one-third for the support of the poor, and one- third for popular education. When transferred by force to the Protestant clergy at the time of the Reformation, Irish Church property was received with these liabilities. But the new trustees neglected their duty. The poor were not supported, nor were the people educated out of the tithes ; and when about a generation ago an attempt was made to have the trust fulfilled after a tenth of the community had for nearly three centuries monopolized the whole of this national fund, there was such a storm raised that Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham separated themselves from the Liberal party, and in the most determined manner opposed the appropriation of a shilling of it to any but the ecclesiastical purposes of the small, monopolizing minority. The poor have been provided for, but by a new rate imposed on the people. Education has been provided for, but out of the general taxes. Nearly all the great statesmen of the last generation agreed with Earl Grey, that “ the people of Ireland were groaning under this grievance — namely, that property intended for the most important and useful pur poses for the benefit of all, was now applied in a manner useful to none, but injurious.” No force of argument, no loolc of facts could shake the hold which the Establishment
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had upon the Legislature. But at what a cost to the empire have they maintained the monopoly ! Mr. Douglas, of Glasgow, in 1828, wrote : — Were Ireland conciliated by just government, by the impartial admission of all religions to civil and political privileges — by a just arrangement of Church property, so as to provide fairly for all the teachers of religion, without taking away anything which any man has a right to enjoy during his life — and were that abject
* Letter to Thomas Spring Rice, esq., M.P., &e., &c., by the Right Rev. James Doyle, D.D. Dublin, 1831.
550 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
poverty in the people abated, and their comforts improved, by a judicious system of relief, we should no longer see desperate hunger in arms against political and religious monopoly and oppression, — the minister of peace leading on troops to shoot his starving flock, for rescuing or secreting the animal which yielded milk to their famishing children. We should see Ireland protected as Scotland is, by a few skeleton battalions, instead of a regular army, at an expense of two millions sterling — besides another army of local yeomanry and armed police — all of whom, besides the enormous expense, so far from producing peace, seem only more to embroil the fray, by local grudges and religious animosity, carrying arms only on one side.”
Dr. Doyle’s plan of Church reform was this. He thought “ the tithing system ought to be utterly and for ever abol ished, and a land tax, not exeeding one-tenth of the value of the land, substituted for it. The produce of which tax, as well as the Church lands, placed at the disposal of Par liamentary or Royal Commissioners, would enable them to provide amply for the support of the poor — to assist, when necessary, the ministers of religion, to educate all the people, and to promote, to the greatest possible extent, works of public necessity or national improvement.”
But a generation of prof/few has passed, and the clergy of a small portion of the population still monopolize the whole of the national funds set apart for the support of religion and education. And we are obliged sorrowfully to admit, with Mr. Goldwiii Smith, that “ the hold of the Irish Establishment on the religious affections of the Irish people is a garrison of 20,000 men. At that price England purchases a source of just discontent and a permanent disaffection.”
“ There are three modes,” says Sir Cornewall Lewis, “ in which the State may deal with different religious persua sions. It may support the clergy and provide for the worship of all, or some, or none. The first of these systems has been followed in France, Belgium, Austria, Prussia, and other German states ; the second in England ; the third in America.” He makes a distinction between establishing and
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endowing a religion, and remarks that the Presbyterian Church of Ulster affords a perfect example of a Church which is endowed, but not established. The same is like wise the case with the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches of Prussia. The king and court are Protestant, but the Protestant Church has 110 legal precedence over the Catholic Church ; there are certain private endowments be longing to the ministers of each persuasion, and when these are not sufficient they are supplemented by government grants. Both churches, therefore, are endowed, but neither is established. There is no Protestant ascendancy ; yet Protestantism prevails throughout Prussia, and is more likely than, ever to prevail in the new German empire, for which the war of last year prepared the way, and which is now being consolidated, with Prussia at its head. On the other hand, the Established Church of England and Ireland has legal rights, privileges, and distinctions which an en dowed Church would riot possess. Arguments against reli gious establishments, therefore, are not arguments against religious endowments. However excessive the existing endowments of the Irish Church may be, she might retain them all without offence to other Churches if they right fully belonged to her, and had not been appropriated by a small section of the community, although designed for the whole. But dearly as she prizes her property, she is almost equally tenacious of the civil rights and privileges with which she is exclusively invested by the State. The theory on which this distinction is founded is, that there is but one true religion, and that all the rest are false and ruinous. Therefore, it is the duty of the civil magistrate not only to establish and defend this true religion, but to restrain, coerce and punish all other religions. An able defender of this principle, the author of “ Essays on the Church,” ex pressed it thus : — “ So entirely are these matters governed by this one simple and eternal truth — that there is but one revelation of the will of God, and of the way of salvation— that such revelation is published to all the world with abundant evidence of its verity, and that to it universal
552 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
obedience is due.” Of course, every government holding this principle believes that its own religion is the only true one, and that it is its duty to persecute every other. The government of Charles II. expelled the Puritans, because they would not conform to the ceremonies imposed by the State. The Puritans, when they settled on American soil, unani mously resolved that the earth and the fulness thereof belonged to the people of God, and that as they were the people of God they had a right to enjoy it to the exclusion of everybody else. On the other hand, the Church of Rome laughs at such pretensions on the part of upstart sects, like the Anglicans or the Presbyterians, presuming to appropriate to themselves, when they have the power, the sacred prin ciple of exclusive salvation, which she claims as her own birthright. Acting upon this principle, and sternly carrying it out, she established her inquisitions and blessed her St. Bartholomews.
Sir Cornewall Lewis thus clearly puts the case between the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic : — “ A Roman Catholic member of Parliament naturally says, ‘ I believe my religion to be true and your religion to be false ; I can not, therefore, understand why you are to make me swear that E will not subvert the Protestant Establishment, while, at the same time, you protest against being parties to any measure for the support of the Roman Catholic clergy. You have one rule for the Protestant and another rule for the Catholic part of the Legislature.” Sir Cornewall adds that it is logically impossible to find any resting-place between the two following extremes — “ either it is the duty of a member of the Legislature to use all human means for the propagation of his own religious belief — to slay, burn, fine, confiscate property, banish, take children from their parents, proscribe the clergy, and prohibit the public worship of all heterodox sects ; or a member of the Legislature, as such, has no cognizance of the truth of creeds ; and he may in that capacity, without violence to his conscience, extend the favour of the State to the clergy of all persuasions.” He well points out the inconsistency of the Legislature in
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dealing with the question of religious endowments. Nothing was said of the wickedness of an Episcopalian Government maintaining a Presbyterian Establishment in Scotland, a Roman Catholic Establishment in Lower Canada and Malta, and but little about protecting Mahomedanism and Hindoo- ism in our Eastern Empire. “ On these subjects the con sciences of the Protestant majority were as dull and callous as they were tender and sensitive on the question of assist ing in the maintenance of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy.” The seed that was sown thirty or forty years ago by Lewis, Macaulay, Brougham, Jeffrey, and Sydney Smith. has borne fruit at length ; Catholic Emancipation has been granted, lawyers have enjoyed the iirst fruits, and have gathered in their golden sheaves, and now \ve have the poor man’s harvest. While I write the House of Commons is engaged, with the active assistance of a Conservative Government, in removing, one by one, what weie called the “securities “ attached to the Emancipation Act, but which were in reality irritating distinctions flaunted before the eyes of the Roman Catholic multitude, to make them feel that they were still a politically degraded and distrusted class. When the Emancipation Act was passed, five offices were expressly reserved. A Roman Catholic could not be the Regent of the kingdom, or the Lord Chancellor of England, or the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, or the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, or the representative of the Sovereign in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Sir Colmaii O’Loghlen has brought in a Bill for the removal of these restrictions, so far as Ireland is concerned ; and Lord Naas, the Irish Chief Secretary, has assented, in the name of the Government, that Roman Catholic lawyers should, equally with Protestants, be eligible for the office of Lord Chancellor, though he would not concede the Viceroyalty. But in this distinction he had no logical ground to stand on. As Mr. Gladstone showed, a Roman Catholic might be Governor-General of India, Governor-General of Canada, a Cabinet Minister, a Home Secretary, and thus superior to the Lord Lieutenant. Arguing, then, from the greater to
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the less, a Roman Catholic might safely be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. If there is a hole which admits the cat, why should the kitten be excluded ? I would suggest that the difficulty on this point might be got over by abolishing the Viceroyalty, and with it the Irish Privy Council. When the tree falls, the ivy that clings to it, and all its parasites, will fall too. Instead of the Lord Lieutenant, Ireland might get a month or two of Royalty every year, with a Dublin “ season “ for the fashionable world. The present Viceregal Court, under the presidency of the Marquis and Marchioness of Abercorn is so stately and brilliant that it might shade into the reality very easily, like a bright morning twilight. Since the Union the Viceroyalty was moonshine.
The homage which the Legislature paid to the arrogance and pettishness of the Irish Church in the granting of eman cipation would be amusing if the consequences were not so serious. It provided that if any person holding a judicial or civil office under the Crown, or an office in a corporation, should resort to a place of worship “ other than one of the United Church of England and Ireland, or the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, in a robe, gown, or insignia of office, he should forfeit his office, and pay a fine of £100.” Is there anything more ridiculous in “ Gulliver’s Travels ?” Yet nothing could be more mischievously devised to defeat the conciliatory purpose of Emancipation. This parading of the civil officer in his robes and with his insignia, in honour of the Episcopal Church, while a Roman Catholic must not dare to enter his place of worship without denuding himself of those symbols, was like dragging a red cloak before a bull. To the priests it was a wanton insult ; to the populace it was a provocative to rebellion. Well, this badge of ecclesi astical inequality, absurdly called a “ security,” will be now removed with the consent of a Conservative Government. It is something for Parliament to have gained so much sense in forty years.
The next link of connexion with the State which Sir Colman O’Loghlen is asking the House of Commons to break,
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is the obligation upon every Protestant entering upon any office under the Crown, to swear against Transubstantiation, and declare the religion of the Church of Rome to be dam nable and idolatrous. If this oath did not give “ security” to the Established Church, it certainly procured for it the animosity of the Roman Catholic population. The State, so far as it was Protestant from the head down, through all its orthodox officers, pronounced an anathema against four-fifths of the Queen’s subjects in Ireland. In the eye of the State the Roman Catholic pastor, who was keeping the people in order gratis, was Le Maudit. This too will be speedily abolished, unless the House of Lords should prove itself as much behind the age as the Irish Solicitor-General, who professes to represent the enlightened liberality of the Dublin University.
But there is another still greater step to be taken, and it must soon follow, that is, the removal of the Irish bishops from the House of Lords. Archbishop Whately declared as the result of his own experience, that he could not be the least use there ; and if he could do no good in Parliament for Church or State, what bishop could ? Now, if the Pro testant bishops continue to be spiritual peers, with seats in the House of Lords, ecclesiastical equality requires that Cardinal Culleii and his episcopal brethren should also “ lift up their mitred fronts in Parliament.” The diia-CiKm which prevails in and under the National Board of Education and other institutions, must be extended to the House of Lords, unless the Irish Church shall be speedily dis-established, by the repeal of every law and the abandonment’of every usage which connects it with the State. All this may be done gradually by a series of such measures as are now before the House of Commons.
But still this dis-establishiiig process, when complete, would leave the Church of one-eighth of the population in posses sion of the ecclesiastical revenues of the whole nation ; and the most difficult task of statesmanship will be to deal with this property, for the right application of which the State is respocsible. Shall the whole system of State support (saving
IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
existing interests) give place to the voluntary system r( Is this practicable, considering its bearing on the English Establishment and on the Ulster Presbyterians ? Is Parlia- liament likely to break up, and abolish a system of support which has always proved an essential part of British State policy, and which has been so wrought into the habits of society that its reversal would have a dangerously unsettling effect. The English voluntaries are loud about the claims of principle in this matter; but no section of the community can force its principles or convictions upon the rest. Our constitution is a system of compromises — of giving and taking, balancing and checking — of the action of conflicting forces, which give all the strength and movement of our social life. For another generation, at all events, the United Kingdom will not be prepared for voluntaryism. Abstract edly considered, and in a new society, that system is no doubt the most just, and most consistent with the rights of conscience ; but would it be favourable to religious liberty in Ireland ? After much reflection, I must say I do not think so. It would bring into continual action that riioney- power, which is so rapidly changing the character and habits of the British people. In the unceasing efforts to raise funds religious zeal would be unduly stimulated, truth would be strained, denominational differences would be exaggerated, prejudices would be inflamed, bigotry would be flattered, the rich would be almost worshipped, and Mammon en throned beside the altar of God. The two great abuses of Christianity — superstition on the one side and fanaticism on the other, would be fatally developed in Ireland. As all Church privileges would depend on the power of paying money, the mass of the people could go to church only as paupers. They would have no right to ministrations which were paid for by those above them, and they would not be consulted in the arrangements of the Church system — at least among Protestants. It would be different in the Church of Rome. But the state of things even there is far from satisfactory ; there is a heavy burden upon the working and middle classes for the support of their religion, and not on them
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only — the gentry and professional gentlemen feel painfully the pressure of pecuniary demands incessantly made for reli gious objects— demands which they cannot well refuse, and keep their social status, and which are thus in the nature of oppressive exactions. In my opinion, therefore, the people of every denomination ought to have a right to public wor ship and to religious ministrations guaranteed by the State, because otherwise real religious liberty cannot be main tained. This right can only be secured by endowment, which would encourage, and not supersede, voluntary contributions, and which should be dealt out equally to the pastors of all denominations.
The revenues of the Established Church, when properly economised (existing interests being fully provided for) will furnish a magnificent fund for this purpose, to be supple mented by Parliament till, by the death of incumbents, and better management, it becomes sufficient for the reasonable wants of all the Churches.
I will not venture to propose details as to the adminis tration of this fund. But so far as the main principles are concerned I have seen nothing better than the following resolutions, submitted to the House of Lords last session by Earl Grey : —
“ That in legislating for Ireland it is tlic duty of the Imperial Parlia ment to adopt such measures as might he expected to gain the approval of an Irish Parliament, fairly representing the people, and expressing the opinion of the majority of men of education and intelligence in Ireland.
u That the application of the whole income derived from Church pro perty in Ireland to the support of a Church Establishment, for the exclusive benefit of a small minority of the people of that country, is unjust, and ought not to be continued.
“ That, with a view to the correction of this injustice, it would be expedient to vest the whole property of the Church in Ireland in the hands of Commissioners empowered to manage it, and to divide the net income derived from it, in such proportions as Parliament may prescribe, between the Protestant Episcopal, the Roman Catholic, and the Presby terian Churches.
‘‘That it would further be expedient to grant to the said Commissioners such a permanent annuity on the Consolidated Fund as would be sufficient, together with the share of the income from Church property in Ireland
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assigned to the Protestant Episcopal Church, to provide for paying to the present bishops and clergy of that Church the full incomes they now receive. As these payments to the existing holders of ecclesiastical pre ferment cease to be required, the proportion of the annuity thereby set free, to be carried to the general account of the Commissioners, and divided between the three Churches in the proportion prescribed by Parliament.
“That the proportion of the net income at the. disposal of the Com missioners assigned to each of the three Churches ought to be paid to Boards of Trustees appointed to receive the same, and apply the amount for the benefit of the said Churches.”
The Protestant objections to the endowment of the priests cannot be maintained, especially now that we have a mixed Legislature and a mixed Government, and it would be as difficult to find the seat of conscience in the Sta,te as the seat of infallibility in the Church. Besides, the principle has been surrendered in the grant to Maynooth, where 500 young men are most liberally boarded and educated for the priesthood. To train a class of men for a particular office, as a matter of State policy, and then to refuse to support them in that office on the ground of principle, the State policy being still the same, and still more urgent, seems to be the height of inconsistency. It is inconsistent in the State, which pays for preparing a man to do a certain work which it holds to be very important, but refuses to pay him for doing the work. It is inconsistent in the priest who, without any qualms of conscience, received his clerical education from the Government, and then alleges that his conscience would be violated by receiving from the same Government a stipend that would leave him as independent when a priest as he had been when a student.
The objection that a State endowment would weaken the attachment of the people to their clergy seems equally un founded. I have never heard that the priests educated by the State at Maynooth were less respected or less influential than the priests educated at the voluntary colleges. Besides, I find that a large number of them are actually in receipt of stipends from the Government as chaplains in workhouses, prisons, barracks, and lunatic asylums. If, however, the
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Roman Catholic bishops would not have their share of the money in the form of stipends like the Protestant clergy, they might get it for the building of churches, the support of colleges, or any other ecclesiastical purposes they might prefer. Their scruples would gradually give way, when both the priesthood and the people would come to regard the endowment as granted, not to sustain the old system of Protestant ascendancy, which would be abolished, but as carrying out the new system of ecclesiastical equality and justice to all without distinction of creed or race,
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CHAPTER XXVII.
A MAN without sympathy and imagination is unfit to write history. In order to do justice to the inhabitants of a subjugated country, he should be able, like Sir Walter Scott in “ Ivanhoe,” and Thierry in his “Norman Conquest,” to take his stand in the ranks of tiio conquered race. Thus only can he give expression to their feelings, or comprehend the causes which influence their conduct ; thus only can he trace to- their source the animosities, instincts, and convic tions, by appealing to which O’Comiell was enabled to wield such tremendous power over the Roman Catholic population. The most eloquent of his colleagues in the struggle for Catholic Emancipation, in the peroration of a speech delivered in the House of Commons, in 1839, ex pressed sentiments in his fiery and impassioned manner which are almost equally appropriate to-day. “ You would inquire,” he said, “ into the state of Ireland. Spare your selves that superfluous labour — let your wonder cease. If anv other country had. been <>‘ovcrned as you have governed
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us, would the results have been the same with those pre sented by that island, for whose guilt as well as misfortunes it ought to occur to you to hold yourselves responsible ? I would ask, if Scotland had been portioned out by the sword of military rapine among merciless adventurers • — if, after the work of robbery was done, a code for the debasement of the Presbyterian population had been enacted — if the Presbyterians of Scotland had not only been despoiled of their property, but deprived of all power to acquire any — if they had been shut out of every honour able employment— if they had been spoliated of every political franchise — deprived of education, and brought down to a state of worse than feudal vassalage — and if, moreover, all these legislative atrocities had been perpetrated under the pretence of maintaining an episcopal establishment
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among a degraded Calvinistic people, have you any doubt
can even the member for Kilmarnock disbelieve— that Scotland would now present to Tory orators a field no less desolate for their mournful expatiation ? Inquire, forsooth, into the state of Ireland since 1835! No, sirs ! But from the day on which to rapacity, to cruelty, to degradation, to oppression, by which the wise are maddened, our wretched island was surrendered, from that day to this hour, let your inquiry be extended, and you may then learn that it is not at the door of Lord Novmanby that Irish atrocities ouo-ht to be laid, but that they should be deposited at your fathers’ graves — that the long inheritance of their guilt should descend upon you ‘.”
This language is scarcely stronger than what has been written on the same subject by a native of Scotland, and a staunch Conservative, Sir Archibald Alison. He represents the conquest of Ireland by the English as the main source of Irish misery, because of the “ atrocious system of confis cation which, in conformity with feudal usages, the victors introduced on every occasion of rebellion against their authority. Without doubt,” he says, “ this conquest is to be traced to the instability of the Irish character, for why did they not keep out the English invaders, as the Scotch, with half their numbers, arid not a quarter of their material resources, effectually did ? But admitting this, as every candid mind must do, there can be 110 doubt that the conquest of the country and confiscation of the estates has been an evil of the very first magnitude to Ireland. Hence have flowed the bestowing of the forfeited estates on English nobles and companies, the middlemen who were to collect their rents and remit them to this country, and the fatal imposition of a host of persons, all of whom lived on their labour, and wrung the last shilling out of their earnings.” This eminent Tory authority states that nearly the whole of the Irish landlords emigrated to London, Paris, and Italy, where they spent their incomes, being known to their tenantry only by the unwelcome visits of the bailiffs
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to collect the rents. Of those who remained in the country, he says, the chief proprietors were office-bearers in the Orange Lodges.
The class of middlemen mentioned by Sir Archibald Alison found that they could greatly increase their incomes by giving farms to industrious Roman Catholics. The necessities of small Protestant proprietors, who imitated the gentry above them in extravagant expenditure and dissi pation, compelled them also to let portions of their lands to members of the proscribed Church. Thus the evicted native population, who had escaped the sword and survived the famine, squatting on the sides of bogs and mountains, gradually crept into the possession of land, and grew in some districts to a considerable middle class. When towards the end of the last century the penal code was so far relaxed that the franchise was extended to Roman Catholics, a large number of the tenants obtained leases, and were made forty-shilling freeholders, in order that they might vote for their landlords. This was the condition on which they got their leases, on comparatively moderate terms, and the majority of them felt that the franchise was just as much the property of the landlord as the farm, and that lie had the same right to claim the vote as the rent. But if any tenant ventured to think otherwise, he was soon convinced of his error, by the appearance of a bailiff with a distress warrant, or a demand for the prompt payment of arrears of rent. At that time the candidates were all Protestants, for the most part Tories, and the interest of the contest turned upon the rival pretensions of powerful county families, so that the Catholic voter cared little about the result. In the course of time, however, the question of Catholic emanci pation was fiercely agitated ; war was made upon Protestant ascendancy, and the Catholics were induced to vote against their landlords, under the influence of political and religious excitement, and the powerful stimulants administered by their priests. The forty-shilling freeholders ceased to obey those who had manufactured them in large numbers, trans-
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ferring their services to their own clergy and their own leaders. The result was that this franchise was abolished, as one of the conditions of Catholic emancipation, and leases, which had been freely given to Roman Catholics on easy terms, were discontinued to such an extent, that whereas forty years ago, leases were the rule, now they are the ex ception. They were granted for political purposes; but when the Reform Act separated the franchise from the lease, and the landlords found that they could no longer control their tenants absolutely, leases were withheld ; and now the mass of the Irish occupiers are tenants-at-will. On many estates they receive notices to quit yearly or half-yearly. This is done that the landlord may maintain his political power ; that the perpetual threat of eviction may secure servility ; and that the tenant may feel himself to be at the mercy of the agent. Half the agents in Ireland are attorneys, who know nothing of the tenants, except as they see them at the “ office,” or at some country hotel or inn, where they are ordered to come with the rent on a certain day. There are happily a large number of landlords and agents who treat the tenants with justice and kindness, giving them every encouragement ; but many of them never visit the farms themselves, to see how the occupiers are getting on, or to encourage improvement. It is not to be supposed, however, that they feel no interest in the condition and capability of the farms. On the contrary, they send valuers of their own periodically, at intervals of five years or oftener, to ascertain whether they have been so improved in the meantime, by drainage, subsoiliiig, or other means, as to be able to bear a higher rent. If the report of the valuer answers the expec tations of his employer, an additional rent is put on, and the tenant has no option but to pay it or quit. This practice operates powerfully against the civilisation of the country. In the first place, it prevents the improvement of the land ; the tenant, feeling that any outlay he makes beyond what is absolutely necessary goes directly to the landlord, takes care not to improve at all. In the second place, if he is
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making money by the farm, lie anxiously conceals his pros perity. When going to pay his rent, he appears in his worst dress, and assumes the most poverty-stricken aspect. He is afraid to make his family appear respectable, or to have his dwelling-house clean, neat, and comfortable. His out-oflices are allowed to remain in a state of dilapidation, and his fences are neglected. His object is to get as much as possible out of the land with the smallest outlay. Consequently, he employs no labour, but does the best he can with the mem bers of his own family. Hence the large emigration of the cottier class, and of the small rack-rented occupiers. Before the famine the latter had multiplied enormously. At that time the potatoes enabled them to live on a small patch of land, with what they could earn in the busy seasons of spring and harvest. But the changes introduced by the destruction of that precarious crop, by the establishment of free trade in corn, and by the transfer of land in the Incumbered Estates Court, have rendered it impossible for them to subsist on their “ bits “ of land. The new proprietors being men of capital, and naturally anxious to obtain the greatest possible dividends for their investments, look only to the “ rental “ in the advertisement of the estate. Finding the majority, if not the whole, of the occupiers set down as “ tenants-at-will,” they conceive that they have a perfect right to clear them off to any extent that may suit their convenience or contribute to their profit ; what becomes of them or their families is no affair of the purchaser. He has paid his money for an estate, and the law gives him the right of taking the land into his own possession, and dealing with it without reference to claims, liabilities, customs, or -charges of any kind arising out of the relations of the former landlord. There may be a population of 100, or 1,000, or 10,000 on the estate ; and if he chooses to level every dwelling-house, to demolish every hamlet and village, and to convert the whole side of the country into a bullock-walk, a sheep-walk, or a deer-park, he has an undoubted right to do so, according to the law of the land. What he does in one
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 5(j5
district, a thousand others like him may do in other districts ; and thus the country might be denuded of its population in’ the most legal manner, as effectually as if it had been deso lated by aii invading enemy. For if any tenant, or any number of tenants, refuse to give “ quiet and peaceable possession,” the agent has only to call upon the sheriff to do his duty. That officer then comes at the head of a body of police, and a gang of men with crow-bars to throw down the houses. If that force is not sufficient to quell resistance, the military are called to their aid. Thus, by a rapid and irresistible process, hearths have been extinguished, roof- trees pulled clown, homes demolished, villages obliterated from the face of the country, and all traces of once pleasant scenes of merry, joyous life, of strong family affections, of endearing social virtues, of interesting local traditions and personal histories, have passed away from existence, as if they had never been ; and when the returning emigrant comes back to visit the old home, instead of the village green and the surrounding dwellings, where he sported in his childhood, he beholds a vast plain, covered with grass, occupied only by sheep, without a trace of human life, or a sign to indicate that that tract of country had ever been inhabited, except the chapel on a neighbouring hill. There was a school there, but it has been dispersed. There was a congregation, but only a miserable remnant of it is now to be seen on Sundays or holy days. The shopkeepers, as well as the farmers, have emigrated, or gone to the workhouse. In a word, a portion of the Irish nation has been completely annihilated, simply by the will of a single capitalist, who has purchased a property in the Incuinbered Estates Court. He has done what he thought to be best for his own interest, of which he claims to be the best judge. He tells you truly, that what he has done is strictly legal ; that the rights of property are sacred, and constitute the very foundations of society. And he tells you this in justification of acts by which he has himself been destroying society as effectually and ruthlessly as it could be done by a horde of barbarous
566 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
marauders in Africa. Of course there are many influences and prudential considerations which restrain the exercise of the powers with which the Statute Law invests the owner of landed property. But if the population be spared by him, it is owing to his self-interest, to his fears, to the apprehended censure of the public, and in many cases, I freely admit, to his humanity. Still the law is on his side, and if the law be just, the man who carries it out in order to enjoy the right it confers ought not to be an object of blame or vengeance.
Some new proprietors who have got, in the Incumbered Estates Court, “ parliamentary titles “ to large tracts of land, good against all the world, have so managed as to improve the country without eliminating the population, or depriving it of all the elements which constitute the strength of a nation, and distinguish a country from a mere territory. The most eminent of these is Mr. Allan Pollok. Instead of evicting or clearing off all the population which he found upon his estates, he reduced the small farmers to the condi tion of labourers, giving them dwellings and wages, and in a mere physical point of view, perhaps, rendering them in some cases better off than they were under the old system. But the man has read history to little purpose, and has but small acquaintance with human nature, and the influences by which it is elevated or depressed, who does not know that those people on Mr. Pollok’s estates are immensely lowered in the social scale by the change from farmers to day labourers. Intellectually, morally, and socially, they are degraded. Under the worst and most tyrannical of landlords they could call their souls and bodies their own, but they cannot do so now. They are Mr. Pollok’s creatures and servants. He may be, and no doubt is, a kind master, as were many of the slave-owners in the Southern States of America. But if Mr. Pollok’s principle were carried out to the extent which the law allows, and if the proprietor exacted everything given by the “ Bond “ in the Landed Estates Court, as he might do with the full approbation of all the extreme advocates of the rights of property, then what
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 507
would become of all those elements of national strength and greatness of which Britons have so proudly boasted, and of which our best oratory and poetry are full ? Where would be the “ bold peasantry, a country’s pride ?” Where would be the spirit of manly independence nurtured by British freedom ? Where would be the intellect of the country, that fills our schools, colleges, and universities ? Where would be the middle class, that constitutes the very back-bone of our national strength ? Where would be the men who form our juries— the class by which mainly our free institutions are worked ? Where would be the class who are the chief consumers of tax-paying articles, who contribute so much to the national revenues ? Where would be the men who have a stake in the country, 011 whom the State could best rely in case an enemy invaded our shores — the class out of which the vast army of Volunteers has sprung up in England ? All these forces of the social system, all these elements of national greatness, might be utterly annihilated in Ireland by the consistent and regular operation of the existing land code in that country. We should see here only two classes : on one side a landed aristocracy — a body of capitalists which could not exceed a few thousands in number ; and 011 the other, a mass of day labourers, with their gangers — a dependent, servile, hireling caste, that could not be entrusted with the elective franchise. Members of Parliament would be returned by a score of Polloks in each county ; the people — the nation — “ the country,” as we understand the word now, regarding it as the depository of political rights and franchises, would have ceased to exist ; and Ireland would be as different from her former self as an English county is from an American plantation. The churches would go with the country, and the congregations, few and far between, would each consist of the proprietor and his family, in a curtained pesv, and his serfs slumbering on their benches, without mind or heart, or hope for any thing beyond mere animal enjoyment, as disfranchised hirelings. It is an abuse of words, a mere mockery, to call social changes like these an improvement to the country.
568 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
It would be better to have the old system with all its vices, the surplus population, the rack-rented tenantry, the ill-cultivated land, the faction fights, the agrarian outrages ; for these are indications of social life, and in the worst cases they are always accompanied, and more than counterbalancerl, by the social virtues. The improvers in question make a solitude and call it peace — a solitude, not less dreary and desolate to a Christian mind because the unpeopled tracts of land over Avhich the smoke of happy homesteads once “ gracefully curled,” have been enriched with guano, and are covered with luxuriant meadows and pasture.
It is rio-ht, however, to remark that this awful work of
O
depopulation, this sacrifice of society to property — of human beings to cattle — has been only to a comparatively small extent the work of capitalists whose object is to realise a large per-centage for their outlay. It has been in some cases effected by the old landlords, whose tenantry offended them by voting against them in favour of a popular can didate, who promised to obtain legislative protection for those whose industrial labour had reclaimed and improved the soil. In the west of Ireland the tourist may travel many a long mile through a country thus turned into a desert by men who resolved to have no tenants unless those whom they could drive to the hustings, as quietly as sheep to Ballinasloe fair. Some of the old nobility, the lineal descendants of those who received the forfeited estates, have not shrunk from this war of extermination against the race which their forefathers found in possession of the soil by natural and divine right. With reference to Connaught, it may be said that the government of the day added a legal right, by which the peasantry might claim protection against exterminating landlords. Mr. John Preiidergast, an Irish barrister, in a work which has lately issued from the press, “TheCromwellian Settlement of Ireland,” composed of records and State papers in Dublin Castle, not before published, has given an authentic account of the deportation of the natives from Leinster, Muiister, and Ulster, to the province of Connaught. On the 21st of September, in the year 1653,
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 5G9
pursuant to an Act of the English Parliament, then recently passed, all the ancient estates and farms of the people of Ireland were declared to belong to the adventurers and the army of England ; and it was announced that the Parliament had assigned Connaught— a poor region lying between the Shannon and the Atlantic Ocean — for the habitation of nearly the whole Irish race, whither they must be trans planted before the 1st of May following, under penalty of death if any of them were found on the eastern side of the river after that day. The other three provinces, which had been nearly all confiscated, were then surveyed, mapped, and cut up into estates for distribution among the adventurers, officers, and soldiers of the English army, according to regi ments, troops, and companies. The soldiers in many cases sold their allotments to land-jobbers. The land was given in return for sums advanced in London to put down the rebellion, for arrears of pay, and as a reward for military services. This last sweeping confiscation involved not only the estates of the native Irish families, but also a lar-’-e
<3
portion of the property of the Anglo-Irish, or Norman settlers of the twelfth century, who had clung to the fortunes of the Stuarts, and lost everything by their loyalty. This was the great settlement of property which constituted the foundation of the territorial aristocracy for whose defence the Penal Code was enacted. There was some rough attempt at classification in the allocation of the transported peasantry in Connaught; but Government seemed to care little how they lived. The country was so poor, so damp, so tempest- beaten along the Atlantic coast, that the unfortunate popu lation have always been subject to periodical famines, by which they were terribly thinned. If starvation drove any of them across the Shannon to seek for food, they might be shot with impunity like the wolves that prowled over the desolated country which they had once inhabited. The estimate formed of the condition of the natives beyond the Shannon may be inferred from the loyal benediction that greeted any of the obnoxious natives who in subsequent times were found straying beyond their proper bounds—” To
570 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
hell or Connaught !” We see, then, that the Irish land system was based on forfeitures arising out of civil wars and abortive rebellions. Its great aim from the first has been to maintain in power a territorial oligarchy, which came to be known as the “English interest” and “the Protestant
O
interest” in Ireland, and which England felt herself pledged to defend against all aggression from the disinherited popu lation.
These unnatural relations between the owners and occupiers of the soil entailed a chronic social war, in which one side relied upon the letter and power of the law, and the other upon an instinctive sense of justice, acting through deceit, cunning, and conspiracy, and too often seeking its ends by outrage and assassination. These evils have been aggravated,
O OO
intensified, and perpetuated by religion. The territorial aristocracy, founded upon conquest, garrisoned the country acquired by the sword with an Established Church, which took possession of the property of the vanquished and evicted native hierarchy. This priesthood made itself more hateful by its appeals to foreign governments, and its conspiracies to overturn the power by which it had been despoiled. Pros trated as the native population was by civil war in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it might have been Avon over to Protestantism if the reformed religion had been presented and administered in a free and tolerant spirit. But it was the policy of the time to enforce and extend it by a system of coercion and persecution — by outraging national customs, and even legally proscribing the national language, by which alone access could be had to the minds and hearts of the native population.
All the strongest feelings and passions of the human heart were thus enlisted against the new religion — the love of justice, the love of freedom, the love of country, the force of conscience, the hatred of oppression, the instincts of humanity, the animosity engendered by the infliction of wrong at the
»/ O J o
hands of a power regarded not only as cruel and rapacious, but as impious and heretical, as lawless and sacrilegious. The constitution in Church and State, still invoked by Con-
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 571
servatives on the hustings, was thus founded on the ruins of Irish society, and of the Irish National Church. It was soon found, however, that estates without labour to cultivate the land were of little value. The Croiirwellians, indeed, gave everywhere proofs of their energy and industry, by building, planting, reclaiming and fencing, changing the face of the country, and establishing many houses, which remain to the present day, constituting a large portion of the existing Irish gentry, supplying the army with officers, the Church with ministers, and the law with barristers and attorneys. In the course of time the feelings of many on both sides became softened and humanised ; kindness and confidence took the place of animosity and distrust, Roman Catholics were admitted as tenants on the estates. Though debarred by law from inheriting property, or entering the professions, they grew gradually into social importance, and multiplied rapidly. The tide of Roman Catholic population rolled eastward and northward with annually increasing volume. In three of the provinces, however, the landlords and employers, the magistrates, the lawyers, the men of position and influence generally — the upper and ruling classes — were of one blood and one faith, while the mass of the people were of another blood and another faith, kept in a state of chronic antagonism
7 -L &
by conflicting interests. In Ulster the relations between the owners and the occupiers of the soil were happily free from this source of discord. Ulster had been planted by English and Scotch colonists, for the most part Presbyterians, before the Cromwellian settlement. These settlers had stipulated with the undertakers that they should get leases of their lands at very low rents, and where leases had not been given, or where they had run out, this general under standing, amounting to a virtual compact, remained in force ; and on the strength of it, the settlers reclaimed the land, and built their dwellings, changing the country from one of the poorest and wildest parts of the island, to be the best culti vated and most prosperous. This was the origin of the famous “tenant-right” of Ulster, of which we hear so much in Parliament, and which, though unrecognised in law, sells
072 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
for as much as the landlord’s fee-simple. The relations between landlord and tenant in this province were totally different from what prevailed in the other provinces. Both owners and occupiers were of the same race and religion ; they worshipped together in the same churches ; they were attached to one another by mutual interest, mutual confidence, the kindly offices and intercourse of neighbourship, by the spirit of loyalty to the same sovereign, and by a common dislike of the “ Irish enemy,” who had been driven into the highlands of Donegal and the bogs of Lei trim, but who still hovered round the borders of the colony, and not unfrequently preyed upon the Protestant occupiers of their .old homes. To the instinct of self-preservation against those marauding attacks, or against threatened rebellion and nocturnal mas sacre, rumours of which were often rife, the Presbyterians and Churchmen of Ulster added an intense hatred of Popery and priests. These animosities gave birth, seventy years ago, to an organization called the Orange Society, which was felt to be necessary from the alleged inadequate protection afforded by the constituted authorities against the aggressions of the Papists, who had by this time OTOVVIL into a laro-e
L i’ O O
majority in the border counties. The organization exists to the present day, despite of several enactments against party processions, and numerous prosecutions for taking part in them, and they are still defended on the same pleas. The battle of the Boyne is still celebrated on the 12th of July, though not with its former offensive parade of banners and fire-arms, and the two parties are as ready to fight now, even in the streets of the great commercial capital of the province, as they were in 1690.
Among the means resorted to in past times for the purpose of depressing the Irish population, and extirpating the Roman Catholic religion, the most cruel was the law which forbade Roman Catholic education. The rulers of Ireland did not neglect to make provision at a very early period for National education. But it was only by conformity to the Established Church that its benefits could be obtained by the natives. It was in fact made the instrument of proselytism to Pro-
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 573
testantism and loyalty, and therefore its tendency was to debase the conscience while enlightening the understanding. The parochial schools established by Queen Elizabeth, the Charter schools established under the Penal Code, the various educational societies subsidised by the Government, the diocesan schools founded for imparting academic education for the middle classes, the Royal schools established chiefly in Ulster by King Charles for the same purpose, and, above all, the Dublin University, had this great object in view- to ally all the intelligence of the country, all the learned professions, all the privileges and social advantages which education confers, as well as all political power, rights, and franchises, with the Protestant religion established in that country. Now, let it be borne in mind that the portion of the population invested with this comprehensive monopoly, this exclusive possession of land, power, and privilege — of all the objects which inspire legitimate ambition, and tend to raise men in the social scale — was but a minority, never more than a third or a fourth, and, if we exclude the Presby terians of Ulster, not more than a fifth or sixth of the lloman Catholics. There are few things more astonishing in history than the way in which this mass of the Irish population, constituting so large a majority, was ignored up to the close of the last century, even by the most fiery patriots, who complained loudest of English mis-government. Dean Swift never condescended to notice them in his philippics except with the utmost contempt and scorn. The patriots of those times, who clamoured for the independence of the Irish Parliament, no more thought of extending the elective fran chise to the “Papists” than the Americans thought before the war of extending the elective franchise to the negroes. Burke was the first statesman who asserted the rights and vindicated the claims of the proscribed race, and this is one of the greatest benefits which that illustrious Irishman con ferred upon his country. The franchise was granted to Catholics, as I before stated, towards the close of the last century, and gradually their claims were put forward with increasing boldness till checked by the abortive rebellion of
574 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
1798. They remained in abeyance during the dreary period that elapsed between the Union and the rise of O’Connell and the Catholic Association. The agitation for Emancipa tion, for the abolition of tithes, and subsequently for the repeal of the Union, the debates in Parliament, the powerful influence of the newspaper press, have since wrought an immense change in the spirit of the Roman Catholic popu lation.
So far as religious animosity did not operate as an anti social and separating force, there has been, by intermarriages and otherwise, an extensive mingling of the two races which have so long been at war upon the Irish soil, especially along the eastern coast and in the principal cities and towns; and there is undoubtedly a large Liberal class in Ireland, which grows daily in importance, although it never has been able to attain a distinct organization either among Roman Catholics or Protestants, or to resist the shock of the ex treme parties on either side in times of public excitement. Those extreme parties, which have been designated Orange and Ultramontane, show no disposition to lay down their arms and live in peace. The constant reiteration of state ments about grievances, acting upon the instincts and pre judices of the Celtic race, has generated a wide-spread feeling of virulent disaffection among the working classes, which was lately very near exploding in sanguinary rebellion. Emigration, which has prevailed to an enormous extent for some years, aggravates and inflames the anti-English feeling of the Roman Catholic community. The result of this whole state of things is to repel British capital from the country, to check the development of its resources, and to prevent the growth of manufactures in the southern provinces.
The Irish difficulty, therefore, to which the late Sir Robert Peel so often alluded, and which has shattered so many cabinets, notwithstanding all that has been done by modern legislation, still subsists in much of its original force, show ing that as yet all remedies adopted by the legislature have been but palliatives, and have not really touched the root
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 575
of the disease, — have not reconciled the hostile races, nor assuaged the fierce intolerance of the rival churches.
Now, it is manifest to all except the blindest Orange bigots, and the maddest Fenian rebels, that one of those races or churches can never destroy the other ; and if the social war which has raged for centuries, is not to rage for ever, impoverishing and debilitating the country, it must be put an end to by removing the “ root of bitterness “ which perpetually troubles its peace. The rights of property are sacred and inviolable. A settlement two hundred years old — which legislation, and a thousand interests and influences, have wrought into the very framework of society — cannot be disturbed without a violent revolution, which could not give birth to any new state of things that would not be infi nitely worse than the present. But it is satisfactory to know that neither the Irish National Association, nor any other political body, nor any public man of the least influence, demands such a revolution. One thing they demand is, that the property which the tenant creates upon his holding by the expenditure of his money or labour may not, the moment it touches the soil, become the property of the landlord, liable to be seized by him, and appropriated in the shape of an increased rent to be paid on the penalty of evic tion. This is the present law of the land, a law made by the landlords against the tenants, which the latter feel to be a flagrant violation of equity, pleading in their favour the authority of the most eminent political economists. In other words, the tenants do not object to the rights of property, but ask only that the law should protect their property as well as the property of the landlord, and that his legal right should not be tantamount to “legal robbery;” bearing in mind the fact that in Ireland, as a rule, all improvements are effected, not by the landlord, but by the tenant. If there be a war which is not to issue in the destruction of one of the parties, peace can be obtained only by a com promise ; and surely it is possible to effect a compromise on this land question by granting the principle of tenant-right
576 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
in some such way as that indicated by the evidence of Judge Long-field, Lord Dufferin, and Alderman Dillon.
The only other question of real difficulty relates to the Church Establishment. It is based upon conquest. It ap propriates to a small fraction of the population, and that the wealthiest, the ecclesiastical revenues set apart for the religious worship and instruction of the whole nation. It is identified with Protestant ascendancy, inheriting and attracting all the sectarian hatred and jealousy to which such an invidious position exposes a religious community. It enjoys the privileges and immunities of a legally domi nant sect, being at the same time a monument of national subjugation, and as such it wounds the national and religious susceptibilities, and is a constant source of irritation and social strife. Here, too, a compromise is inevitable. It is only a question of time. Either the Establishment must be allowed to die out with the existing incumbents, saving their vested interests, or the Roman Catholic clergy must be endowed on equal terms. The Time*, of the 7th of June last, expresses in few words what must be the result of these compromises serving as the bases of a lasting peace. “ As far as regards the legislation of the future, the government of Ireland must be neither Protestant nor Catholic, Presby terian nor Anglican; it must hold itself aloof from exclusive seminaries, whether found in Belfast or in St. Stepheii’s- green; and it must maintain in their integrity the principles of National education which Lord Stanley inaugurated, and
*/ G
which we cannot believe Lord Deny will consent to under mine.” The principle of compromise has been embodied in this system of National education, and in the Queen’s Col leges, but it has }Tet to be extended to the endowed schools for the middle classes, and to the Dublin University, saving the rights of “ Trinity College,” as the college of the clergy of the Established Church.
This rapid review will enable the reader to understand the relations of parties in this country, and the questions of policy that will be at issue in all our elections. The Torv
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 577
party in Ireland have hitherto been against concession or compromise ; they have always laboured to maintain Pro testant ascendancy unmitigated, relying on coercion and repressive legislation, partisan sheriffs, partisan grand juries, partisan magistrates, packed juries, and a restricted and controlled elective franchise, to maintain the supremacy of the law and the so-called “Protestant interest,” The result of this exclusive and one-sided system has been to destroy confidence in the law, and respect for the authorities by whom it was administered. In 1821 Lord Redesdale wrote to Lord Eldon as follows : — “ In England the machine (of government) goes on almost of itself, and, therefore, a bad driver may manage it tolerably well. It is not so in Ireland. The country requires great exertion to bring it into a state of order and submission to the law. The whole population, high and low, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant, must all be brought to obedience to law ; nil must be taught to look up to the law for protection.” To effect this object has always been the aim and tendency of the Liberal party in the government of Ireland. But at every step in their progress in this direction they have been strenuously resisted by the party of which Lord Eldon was so long the guiding spirit. They resisted Catholic Emancipation till frightened into concession by the threat of civil war. They resisted the settlement of the tithe question till civil war actually raged in some districts. They resisted parliamentary reform, corporation reform, and every other reform which extended the blessings of the constitution to Roman Catholics. In 1839 there were pitched battles in both Houses of Parliament on the land question. Mr. Drummond, then Under-Secretary for Ireland, replying to a memorial of the Tipperary magis trates, relative to the assassination of Lord Norbury, ventured to state that “property had its duties as well as its rights.” In consequence of the utterance of this apparently harmless truism, the magistrates met again, and resolved that it had increased the animosity against the owners of the soil, and emboldened the disturbers of the public peace, and that, as they had little hope from the Irish Executive, they felt it
2P
578 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
their duty to apply to the people of England, the legislature, and the throne, for protection. In the House of Commons, Mr. Shaw, the Eecorder of Dublin, was so affected by the encouragement thus given to agitation, that he said, “ In common with all loyal subjects in Ireland, I implore you to consider the sufferings, the shame, and the sorrow of a sister people, before that unhappy land ceases to be inhabitable, and is blotted out from among the civilised nations of the earth.” But Lord Morpeth, then Chief Secretary, read a statement made by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, to show that from the Union to that time, Ireland had scarcely been governed for a single year according to the ordinary course of law. That was under the Tory rfyime. In 1823, no less than 2,600 memorials for mercy were brought before Lord Wellesley, who set aside capital sentences in no less than 400 cases, mostly agrarian. What a frightful state of society these figures suggest ! The policy of conciliation pursued by Lord Normanby, as Viceroy, and Lord Morpeth, as Chief Secretary, was vehemently condemned by the House of Lords, and by the Conservative leaders in the Commons. But it was shown that during that administration the price of land through a great part of Ireland had risen from eighteen to twenty-five years’ purchase, and that the value of Irish stocks, and the number of depositors in the various banks, had largely increased. Lord Morpeth defended the policy which produced these results in the following terms: — “ Honorable gentlemen might question the policy of minis ters, they might libel their motives, it mattered not ; but this he would take leave to say, that they would never withdraw the opinion deliberately given, that property had its duties 110 less than its rights ; or cease to urge, with even more deliberate warning, upon friends or opponents, all, without exception, that there were proceedings which, while Ireland continued what it long has been, and long, he feared, must be, would generate resistance. ‘The flesh will quiver
where the pincers tear.’ Without risking a
conflict on the new Poor Law Bill, or any analogous mea sure, he could not conclude without the declaration of his
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 579
own deep conviction, that it was by operating, in the first instance, upon the outward circumstances of the people, that they could afterwards cope with their moral condition, by creating new links between the employer and employed— by planting in them new hopes and new habits— deepening the channels of industry, and developing all natural resources. By these means alone could they effectually obtain the great ends of civil government and social order.”
The policy here described has been carried out more or less steadily by every Liberal Government, and especially by the accomplished speaker himself, the late lamented Earl of Carlisle, during the long period of his administration as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The result has been the gradual
o
diminution of crime, till of late years the judges on circuit have had very little to do ; the rights of property have been more and more respected; agrarian offences have almost disappeared, and the state of things so much desired by Lord Redesdale, nearly half a century ago, is likely to be very soon realized, provided there be no reaction. To the Roman Catholics of Ireland this would mean a restoration of the old Protestant ascendancy, an encouragement of Orange fanaticism, a hostile executive, law perverted to the purposes of oppression by a bigoted magistracy. One of the most strange anomalies connected with the state of Ireland is the fact, that the chief hope of such a restoration lies with the constituencies of Ulster, though the great majority of the electors are Presbyterians and Roman Catholics. The repre sentation of that province is almost exclusively Conservative and Episcopalian. For this state of things the Presbyterians are mainly responsible ; yet they have no interest whatever in maintaining it. On the contrary, their Conservative representatives refused to legalize the tenant-right, or to sanction the principle of tenant compensation, which the Ulster Presbyterians, almost to a man, regard as essential to the prosperity of the country. They also consider the Establishment of the Episcopalian body, whose members are not much more numerous than themselves, as humiliating to their own Church, and a gross violation of the principle
2 P 2
580 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
of religious equality. Notwithstanding all this, they vote for the Tories, and use their political influence to resist the progress of freedom and justice. This suicidal policy is to be ascribed altogether to their hatred of “ Popery,” fostered and inflamed by the Orange Society. In their mother country, Scotland, Presbyterian constituencies, though no lovers of the Papacy, almost invariably elect men of Liberal principles to represent them in Parliament; but in Ireland they hold in abeyance the principles of patriotism, which are so dear to their race, and as the Rev. Professor Witherow said lately in Londonderry, “They are still but Scots in Ireland.”
KEMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 581
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE Irish landlords heave found in Lord Dufferin a most ac complished advocate. No champion ever fought with more polished weapons, or used them more skilfully. We cannot but admire the force of his arguments, the masterly dis position of his materials, and the perfection of his rhetoric. If we are disappointed in anything, it is that a nobleman so singularly gifted, with a mind so well cultivated, so en lightened by travel, so just and kind as a landlord, so liberal in politics, and really so patriotic, does not always rise superior to the instincts of his order. There is no man in the peerage whom we should have regarded as so well quali fied to act as an arbitrator between the two classes — land lords and tenants in this country. I, for one, therefore, regretted that he took up the position of an advocate of one of the parties, and that his discussion of so great a question assumed the form of a plea for the Irish landlords. Not that he should be regarded as wanting in interest for the people, of whom he speaks so beautifully when he says: — “Yet, some human agency or other must be accountable for the perennial desolation of a lovely and fertile island, watered by the fairest streams, caressed by a clement at mosphere, held in the embraces of a sea whose affluence fills the noblest harbours of the world, and inhabited by a race — valiant, generous, tender — gifted beyond measure with the power of physical endurance, and graced with the live liest intelligence.” Nor has the crushing commercial jealousy of England been ever more forcibly expressed by any Irish patriot than by Lord Dufferin in the following passage :— “ From Queen Elizabeth’s reign until the Union the various commercial confraternities of Great Britain never for a moment relaxed their relentless grip on the trades of Ire land. One by one, each of our nascent industries was either
582 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
strangled in its birth, or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody of the rival interest in England, until at last every fountain of wealth was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial enterprise have perished through desuetude.
“The owners of England’s pastures had the honour of opening the campaign. As early as the commencement of the sixteenth century the beeves of Roscommon, Tipperary, and Queen’s County undersold the produce of the English grass counties in their own market. By an Act of the 20th of Elizabeth Irish cattle were declared “ a nuisance,” and their importation prohibited. Forbidden to send our beasts alive across the Channel, we killed them at home/and began to supply the sister country with cured provisions. A second Act of Parliament imposed prohibitory duties on salted meats. The hides of the animals still remained, but the same influence soon put a stop to the importation of leather. Our cattle trade abolished, we tried sheep farming. The sheep breeders of England immediately took alarm, and Irish wool was declared contraband by a Parliament of Charles II. Headed in this direction, we tried to work up the raw material at home, but this created the greatest out cry of all. Every maker of fustian, flannel, and broadcloth in the country rose up in arms, and by an Act of William III. the woollen industry of Ireland was extinguished, and 20,000 manufacturers left the island. The easiness of the Irish labour market and the cheapness of provisions still giving us an advantage, even though we had to import our mate rials, we next made a dash at the silk business ; but the silk manufacturer proved as pitiless as the woolstaplers. The cotton manufacturer, the su:;ar refiner, the soap and candle maker (who especially dreaded the abundance of our kelp), and any other trade or interest that thought it worth its while to petition was received by Parliament with the same partial cordiality, until the most searching scrutiny failed to detect a single vent through which it was possible for the hated industry of Ireland to respire. But, although excluded from the markets of Britain, a hundred harbours
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 583
gave her access to the universal sea. Alas! a rival commerce on her own element was still less welcome to England, and as early as the reign of Charles II. the Levant, the ports of Europe, and the oceans beyond the Cape were forbidden to the flag of Ireland. The colonial trade alone was in any manner open — if that could be called an open trade which for a long time precluded all exports whatever, and excluded from direct importation to Ireland such important articles as sugar, cotton, and tobacco. “What has been the con sequence of such a system, pursued with relentless perti nacity for 250 years ? This — that, debarred from every other trade and industry, the entire nation flung itself back upon ‘ the land’ with as fatal an impulse as when a river whose current is suddenly impeded rolls back and drowns the valley it once fertilized.”
“ I may be told,” his lordship adds, “ this frantic clinging of the Irish to the land is natural to their genius, and not a result of commercial restrictions. History supplies the per fect refutation of such a theory. Though the hostile tariff of England comprehended almost every article produced in Ireland, one single exception was permitted ; from the reign of William III. the linen trade of Ireland has been free ; as a consequence, at this day Irish linens are exported in enormous quantities to every quarter of the globe, and their annual value nearly equals the entire rental of the island. Many attempts were made by the rival interest in England to deprive us of this boon, and in 1785 a petition— signed by 117,000 persons — was presented by Manchester, praying for the prohibition of Irish linens, but justice and reason for once prevailed, and the one surviving industry of Ireland was spared. How has it repaid the clemency of the British Parliament? By dowering the Crown of England with as fair a cluster of flourishing towns and loyal centres of industry as are to be found in any portion of the Empire. Would you see what Ireland might have been — go to Deny, to Belfast, to Lisburn, and by the exceptional prosperity which has been developed, riot only within a hundred towns and villages, but for miles and miles around them, you may
584 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
measure the extent of the injury we have sustained. Would you ascertain how the numerical strength of a nation may be multiplied, while the status of each individual that com prises it is improved — go to Belfast, where (within a single generation) the population has quadrupled, and the wages of labour have nearly trebled.”
In allusion to the answers which his letters to the Times called forth, Lord Dufferin remarks — “ If my language has betrayed too warm a sympathy with the class of which I am a member, the groundlessness of the accusations with which it has been assailed must plead my excuse. No such in stinctive partiality has extended to the disposition of my facts or the array of my arguments. If I seem to have sup pressed all cognizance of the instances of harshness and mismanagement laid to the charge of individual landlords by men of the highest honour, it is not because I do not acknowledge and deplore their existence, but because they are so manifestly exceptional as to have produced an inap preciable effect on the current of events we are considering. In dealing with the economic interests of a great country, it is on the essential forces which are producing specific results, rather than on the capricious accidents of the situation, that we must fix our attention.”
In the same letter he observes that the landlord of a hundred years ago may have been himself the creature of circumstances— that not he, but the middleman, was the rackrenter, who helped to produce a surplus population — and that of one thing alone can we be certain, “ that in dealing with his property, he pursued his own advantage with more or less intelligence, and in doing so exercised a right not only legitimate in itself, but which has been universally recognised as the mainspring of human progress.”
Of course the rights of property must be recognized if society is to exist at all, and it is perfectly natural that every class should pursue its own advantage with more or less intelligence. But considering how the present race of Irish proprietors obtained their property, they were bound to do all in their power to render it sacred, to purge it from
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its original sin of violence, and cleanse their title deeds from the stains of blood. That was a memorable occasion when the Irish Viceroy and Cardinal Cullcn met this year at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in the Dublin Mansion House. It was the first time that ever the head of the Irish Govern ment met at the social board a prince of the Roman Church, recognising his rank, and giving him precedence above all those who were present, so that the representative of the Pope entered next to the representative of the Queen. The Cardinal’s health was proposed next after that of his Excel lency, and was received with all the honours. But why do I advert to this matter here ? For this reason. Archbishop Cullen was not only a Cardinal sitting beside the Viceroy. He was the son of a Celtic tenant farmer sitting beside one of the great territorial lords, to whom the confiscated lauds had been parcelled out by the King of England. This fact gives great significance to a circumstance which has not been hitherto noticed, and which is pertinent to my present pur pose. The Cardinal, in speaking of the wrongs of the country, referred particularly, as an illustration, to the “ Crornwelliari Settlement of Ireland,” by Mr. J. P. Premlergast. Now that work contains the original records of the clearing out of the people from the three provinces, and transporting them beyond the Shannon. The details of the barbarities of the troops, who were the new settlers, in effecting these evictions, and the sufferings of women and children, many of them of the oldest families and most gentle blood in the kingdom, are truly horrible and heartrending. There is no Roman Catholic who reads the book thus recommended in the presence of the Lord Lieutenant and the Lord Mayor and the Judges of the land, who will not say that the property acquired under the Cromwellian settlement was acquired by robbery of the most atrocious kind. Mr. Prendergast states that there are men still living whose grandfathers saw one of the owners of those forfeited estates wandering about among the tenants, with his title deeds tied up in a pocket handkerchief. The memory of this great national proscription — this eviction of a whole people — is kept fresh in the people’s minds. Mr.
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Butt’s “ Plea for the Celtic Race,” which they eagerly read, is full of impassioned eloquence upon this subject, and traces to the Cromwellian arid other confiscations the fact that the Celtic race cannot be got to regard the rights of the Irish landlords as equitable rights of property. They admit them to be legal, but deny that they are just. Mr. Butt contends that the war waged between the two races two hundred years ago is raging still, and that the clearance which could not be wholly effected by transportation to Connaught, to Spain, and Barbadoes, is being completed now by emigration to America. I am speaking of the feeling of the people, which is encouraged in this way by authorities such as I have named, and, I may add, by some of the highest Conservative and English authorities also.
Now the question is, whether this feeling was inevitable, or whether it has been kept alive by the conduct of the land lords as a class. I wish Lord Dufferin could have made the negative of this quite clear from history ; and as he lias not done it, I fear no other writer can. Some very important facts have been lost sight of in this discussion, which I can advert to only in the briefest form. The Irish landlords of a hundred years ago were not merely landlords pushing their own advantage as best they could under a system of equal laws made by disinterested parties. They were themselves the lawmakers. Up to that time the Roman Catholics had no franchise, and election by the few Protestant voters was a mere form. In most boroughs there were no electors, and the lord of the soil returned the members. The counties, too, were each at the disposal of two or three powerful families. The Lords and Commons in College-green, then, were landlords, who made what laws they liked for their own advantage, according to what their ideas of that was. These same landlords and their connexions were the magis trates by whom the laws thus made were administered, generally by each magistrate singly, sitting in his own house. Again, these same landlords were members of the grand juries, with full and irresponsible power of imposing taxes on the tenants, and the proceeds were spent in a
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gigantic system of jobbing. Instead, therefore, of being the victims of circumstances, they had, as legislators, magistrates, and grand jurors, as well as landlords, complete control over the condition of the country. They might have made it a paradise if they liked. The Roman Catholic people were broken down to a state of abject submission to the ruling powers.
I have already quoted a few Protestant authorities to show how the landed proprietors fulfilled their trust, and redeemed their property from the original taint of spoliati on. I can barely allude to a few more, and I do so from a sense of duty ; be cause so long as the landlord class feels that it has nothin^ to reproach itself with, and that all the blame of our misery lies at the door of the people, they will never be willing to make the concessions which the peace of the country, and even the safety of the empire demands. Many of them feel and talk as if their title deeds were handed down to them by an angel from heaven, and as if they had, as a class, done their duty — or rather as if they had no duties and the tenants no rights. This state of feeling has naturally arisen from the absolute power with which they were invested, and which I readily admit no other race or class of men would have abused less ; for there is no liner breed of men in the world than the Irish landed gentry.
Arthur Young, who travelled in Ireland just a hundred years ago, stated that the poor of Minister were reduced to desperation, because tillage was virtually forbid, on account of the shortness of their tenures, “ the rich excluding the poorer sort, to make room for flocks and herds, which are easily converted into ready money and find a ready market.” Crawford, in his “ History of Ireland,” states that at this period “ cottiers, being tenants-at-will, were everywhere dispossessed of their little holdings, which, in considerable tracts, were set by the landlords to monopolisers, who by feeding cattle were able to pay them a higher rent. In this manner even whole baronies were laid open to pasturage.”
In 1780 Mr. Ogle, in a debate on a bill for protecting the persons of the Protestant clergy, said — “ The fact is, that the
588 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
landed man in Ireland is the great extortioner. There is hardly an estate which is not let at the highest penny, and much above its value.” Seven years later — 1787 — the Irish Attorney-General observed — “As to the peasantry of Munster, it is impossible for them longer to exist in the extreme wretchedness under which they labour. A poor man is obliged to pay £6 for an acre of potato ground, which £6 he is obliged to work out at od. a day. At last the people became frantic, and forced their own clergy from their parishes, nailing up the chapel doors “ — no distinction made in the paroxysm of popular frenzy.
I make all these quotations from Sir George C. Lewis’s volume on “Irish Disturbances.” As a test of the spirit of Irish landlordism, he states (p. 43) that “ the Irish House of Commons resolutely abstained from instituting any inquiry into the causes of the tumults among the peasantry in the last forty years before the Union. The House went so far in 17G4 as to suppress a report on the late insurrections in the North, which had been actually prepared, and which the chairman of the committee had begun to read. It was not till twenty-four years after the Union that the local dis turbances that had been rife for nearly a century were made the subject of Parliamentary inquiry. Select Committees of both Houses were appointed in 1824, and a Committee of the House of Commons in 1834. These inquiries, Sir George C. Lewis remarks, exhausted the subject, and he carefully digested the information they contained.
According to the system of government which then pre vailed, and which Sir George remarked, “has been to a greater or less extent acted on nearly up to the present day,” every Irish Catholic was presumed to be disaffected to the State, and was treated as an open or concealed rebel; the entire government was carried on by Protestants for their own benefit. The whole of Ireland was treated as a province or colony, whose interests were to be sacrificed to those of the mother country. So far was this carried, that in 1698 petitions were presented to the English House of Commons from the fishermen of Folkstone and Aldborough,
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stating that they were injured by the Irish catching herrings at Waterford and Wexford, and sending to the Straits, thereby forestalling and ruining the petitioners’ markets.’ As the English Government employed political “under takers,” who engaged to have a majority in both Houses if a certain number of places were at their disposal, so the large absentee landed proprietor, unable to manage his own estate, and unwilling to trust an agent, let it to middlemen, at a rate which left him the power of making a large profit rent, and who, having no permanent interest in the estate, oppressed the miserable cottiers without mercy. The land lord knew that in so acting “ he prevented the possibility of any respectable tenantry being ever founded on his property. The landlord, if resident, was almost invariably a Protestant, and he exercised over his tenant “ not only that influence which a creditor necessarily exercises over his debtor, but also the power which the law gave to the Pro testant over the Catholic — to the magistrate and grand juror over the suspected rebel.” Arthur Young noticed some improvement; but while in England the labouring poor “ reigned as sovereigns,” in Ireland still “the remnant of the old manners, the abominable distinction of religion, united with the oppressive conduct of the little country gentlemen, or rather vermin of the kingdom, altogether bore very heavy on the poor people. “The landlord of an Irish estate in habited by Koman Catholics is a sort of despot, who yields obedience in whatever concerns the poor to no law but that of his will.” Anything tending towards sauciness was punished with the cane or horsewhip with the most perfect security. “A poor man would have his bones broken if he offered to lift his hand in his own defence. Knocking down is spoken of in the country in a manner that makes an English man stare.” And Arthur Young adds this : — “ Landlords of consequence have assured me that many of their cottiers would think themselves honoured by having their wives and daughters sent for to the bed of their master — a mark of slavery which proves the oppression under which such people must live. Nay, I have heard anecdotes of the lives
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of people being made free with without any apprehension of the justice of a jury.”*
“ An Irish Country Gentleman,” in a work on the “ Causes of Popular Discontents in Ireland,” published in 1804, writes : — “ A horde of tyrants exists in Ireland, in a class of men that are unknown in England — in the multitude of agents to absentees ; small proprietors, who are the pure Irish squires ; middlemen, who take large farms, and squeeze out a forced kind of profit by re-letting them in small parcels ; lastly, the little farmers themselves, who exercise the same insolence they receive from their superiors on the unfortu nate beings who are placed at the extremity of the scale of degradation — the Irish peasantry.”
Lord Charlemont thus describes the relations between landlord and tenant at the close of the last century : — “ Oxeri supplied the place of men, and by leaving little room for cultivation, while they enriched their pampered owners, starved the miserable remnants of thinly scattered inhabit ants. Farms of enormous extent, let by their rapacious arid indolent proprietors to monopolising land-jobbers, by whom small portions of them were again let and re-let to intermediate oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value among the wretched starvers upon potatoes and water,” &c.-f*
Mr. Leslie Foster, M.P., stated that the proximate cause of the disturbances which were then so frequent was the extreme physical misery of the people, coupled with their liability to be called upon for the payment of different charges, which it was often perfectly impossible for them to meet. The immediate cause was the attempt to enforce those demands by the various processes of law. But the remote cause, Mr. L. Foster said, was “ a radically vicious state of society which prevails in many parts of Ireland, and which has originated in the events of Irish history, and which may be in a great measure palliated, but which it w^ould, I fear, be extremely difficult now wholly to change.” He added,
* Lewis on “ Irish Disturbances,” p. 52. t Hardy’s Life, vol. L p. 171.
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however, that “ there are different districts of Ireland almost as unlike each other as any two countries in Europe.” Mr. Francis Bla.ckburne, the present Lord Chancellor of Ire land, in his evidence described the origin of a very dangerous disturbance. It was the clearance of an estate, the property of Lord Stradbrook, at the expiration of a lease of thirty-one years, at a time when, as Mr. Blackburne said, the “only alternative was possession of the land or death by starvation. There was no defence to the ejectment. “ Lord Stradbrook’s agent, attended by the sheriff and several men to assist him, went upon the lands, and dispossessed this numerous body of occupants. They prostrated the houses, leaving the people at liberty to carry away the timber. The number of persons that were thus deprived of their homes on that occasion was very large ; I am sure there were above forty families, but I cannot tell the number of individuals. They were persons of all ages and sexes, and in particular a woman almost in the extremity of death.” Another witness, Mr. Matthew Barrington, Crown Prosecutor, stated that Mr. Blood, the agent who had effected this terrible clearance, was murdered, and the new tenant also almost immediately after.
No doubt the evictions would have been far more nume rous than they were but for the law of distress, by which the landlords kept the people prostrate in terror under their feet, and could starve them out of their homes, and force them to become wandering mendicants, whenever they pleased — a law wdiich is in force at the present moment, after half a century of Imperial legislation, and to ten fold a greater extent, leases having almost disappeared. The results are not so palpable now, because there is the refuge of the workhouse, the outlet of emigration, and the chance of employment in England and Scotland. But the legal power is the same, though the incidents connected with the impounding of cattle, &c., are not so barbarous. Mr. Wakefield describes the system, which many men now alive can remember seeing in full operation : — “ Six months’ credit is generally given on the rents, which is called the hanging gale. This is one of the great levers of oppression,
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by which the lower classes are kept in a kind of perpetual bondage ; for as every family almost holds some portion of land, and owes half a year’s rent, which a landlord can exact in a moment, this debt hangs over their heads like a load, and keeps them in a continual state of anxiety and terror. If the rent is not paid, the cattle are driven to the pound, and if suffered to remain there a certain number of days they arc sold. This I have frequently seen done after the occupying tenant had paid his rent to the middleman, who had failed to pay it to the head landlord. The numerous instances of distress occasioned by this severity, which everyone who has resided any time in Ireland must have witnessed, are truly deplorable ; and I believe them to be one of the chief causes of those frequent risings of the people, under various denominations, which at different times have disturbed the tranquillity of the country, and been attended with atrocities shocking to humanity and disgraceful to the empire.”*
Against this overwhelming and crushing tyranny the people had no remedy but in lawless combination, which was so formidable in 1834 that Lord Oxmantown said “ it surpassed the law in vigour, promptitude, and efficiency, and it was more safe to violate the law than to obey it.” It is so still in some districts ; for the judges complain at the assizes that in several counties the majority of the agrarian offenders are never brought to justice.
Sir George Lewis remarks, after reviewing the evidence on agrarian disturbances, that the Whiteboys found in their favour already existing “ a general and settled hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry. The Irish peasant has been accustomed to look upon the law as an engine for oppressing and coercing him, administered by hostile persons and in a hostile spirit ; he has been accus tomed to look upon himself as the object of general persecu tion ; the world has not been his friend, nor the world’s law.” But he knew perfectly well that the men who exclusively made the law, arid by whose creatures it was
* Wakefield’s *’ Account of Ireland,” vol. i. p. 244.
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administered, were the landlords. Hence the counter- terrorism of agrarian combination. Sir George C. Lewis, writing in 1836, remarks — “Whiteboyism reigns triumphant, It does not put. forth its strength, because it has beat down all opposition. The country is tranquil, but in many parts it is the tranquillity of a barrel of gunpowder. If any person imagines that the Whiteboy code is abrogated when ever outrages are not dally committed, let him ask the Tipperary or Limerick landlord to what extent he is a free agent in the letting of his land, and what would be the probable duration of the life of a new tenant who violated the Whiteboy rules. A land-owner in a county where the Whiteboy spirit prevails knows that he owes his security only to his means of defence, and sees in every peasant, even in his own labourers, a concealed or a future enemy. The Irish landlords have been often accused of harshness and unkindness to the poor ; but as long as the present system prevails can we wonder that persons with the feelings and failings of men should fall short of the Gospel rule of loving their enemies ? The peasantry, on the other hand, experience all the pernicious moral influence which arises from using bad means to accomplish what is considered a good end, and arc depraved and even brutalized by the sanguinary and atrocious practices, the cold-blooded assassinations, the mutilations, the beatings, and the burnings to which they have recourse in order to enforce their law.” Sir George Lewis here quotes a passage from a charge of the late Chief Justice Bushe, at the Queen’s County special commission, in which he seemed to anticipate a harvest of Fenianism from the system of land laws which still holds the cultivators of the soil at the mercy of the proprietors : — “ The bad pas sions let loose, the charities of life extinct, those relations dis severed which between the higher and lower classes are the offspring of reciprocal protection and dependence, confidence displaced by suspicion, and fear and hatred in all classes, vitiating and corroding the heart of man — these are pro ductive seeds which threaten a fearful growth, and if the mischief be not put down, every reflecting man will look
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forward to the necessary influence of such a state of things upon the future destinies of Ireland, as operating far beyond the local disturbance of a provincial district.”
Sir George C. Lewis sums up the evidence on the land question, as it existed seventy years ago. If we substitute “ Kibbonism “ for Whiteboyism, it will apply to several counties in Ireland at the present hour : — “ This system pervades the whole society ; it sets the rich against the poor ; it sets the poor against the rich ; it constantly actuates the whole agricultural population in their most ordinary dealings ; it causes sleepless nights and anxious days to those who do not individually feel the weight of its ven geance ; it is not the banding together of a few outcasts who betake themselves to illegal courses, and prey 011 the rest of the community, but the deliberate association of the peasantry, seeking by cruel outrage to secure themselves ao’ainst the risk of utter destitution raid abandonment. Its
O
influence, therefore, even when unseen, is general ; it is, in fact, the mould into which Irish society is cast — the expres sion of the wants and feelings of the great mass of the community. So for as it is successful, it is an abrogation of the existing law, and an abolition of the existing govern ment, for which it substitutes a dominion beneficial, appa rently, in its immediate consequences to the peasantry, but arbitrary, capricious, violent, unprincipled, and sanguinary, oppressive of the upper and corruptive of the lower classes, and in the long run most pernicious to the entire society.”*
The old grand jury system alone would be enough to convict the Irish landlords as a class before any just tribunal — not merely for its excessive imposts on an impoverished people, but for its shameless jobbery and corruption. Bishop Doyle was not in the habit of dealing in vague declamation ; he was careful about facts ; and it may be safely affirmed that in the denunciation of the grand jury system in his letter to Mr. Spring Rice, he but expressed the opinion of all impartial men upon the subject. The picture which he draws * Lewis on “ Irish Disturbances,” p. 306.
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of the old Irish society is dark indeed ; but it is very little exaggerated ; and besides, it is the natural effect of a system under which what Sir James Emerson Tennent once called “ a miserable monopolizing minority “ had everything their own way.
“There can be 110 doubt/’ wrote Dr. Doyle, “that till within these very few year;-} every administration of public money or business in Ireland was most corrupt. There was 110 faith kept with God or man by those to whom the public interests, or any portion of thorn, happened to be committed. From the highest tribunals to the lowest collector of excise, bribery, extortion, perjury prevailed. In all the public offices peculation and plunder was reduced to system — openly avowed and acted upon. The commissioners at the different boards were as regularly feed by those who had business to transact with them as they were paid by Govern ment. But the Government itself was the great debauchee. There was no job too gross, no proceeding so licentious, no abuse of power or patronage so glaring, to which its active agency or tacit sanction was not extended. The Church was in perfect keeping with the State, the public offices were dens of thieves, the courts of justice, with their pur lieus, were sinks of corruption, and the grand juries through out the country, invited by their practice and example the suitors or cLumaiits at every court of assize in Ireland to disregard both truth and justice — to commit perjury, and to plunder or oppress their neighbour. There is no exaggera tion — no high colouring in the foregoing statement. The truth of every portion of it is either already recorded in evidence reported to Parliament, or could be proved by ten thousand living witnesses. This then being till lately the state of Ireland, and of the administration of all her public affairs, it is no wonder that men doubt whether money could be levied equitably, and expended honestly and impartially, even for the benefit of the poor. Let it, however, be con sidered, and in the first place, that until within a few years past, an exceedingly small fraction of the people of this country held exclusive possession of the administration of
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public business in all its diversity and ramifications. That fraction of the people lived by their offices, pensions, sine cures, or employments ; they alone constituted society in Ireland ; they were all sharers alike in oppression, and each took his portion of the spoil produced by it. They were not ashamed of each other, for no man blushes at his own theft in a company of thieves. There was no government to exercise control. The business of Government was to divide among them their ill-gotten store. There was no court to which they could be cited, for they themselves filled the bench, and composed the juries ; there was no tribunal created by public opinion to which virtue could appeal from oppression, or before which profligacy might be arraigned and convicted. No ! for there was no press but that worked by the hireling of corruption, or if another press only breathed on gilded or ermined crime, it was subdued, prosecuted, persecuted, and extinguished. But as the people of this nation multiplied they waxed strong, they caught a glimpse of knowledge, as Moses saw the Deity, whilst it passed by, and the multitude, warmed and invigorated by it, overthrew and broke down that fortress of corruption which had held them so long enslaved. This popular might operating upon Parliament has bid a new order of things to arise in Ireland. The Government is already more than half eman cipated from the slavery of corruption — the courts of justice are being gradually purified ; the boards and public offices are everywhere cleared or clearing out ; peculation is now obliged to work in secret. Public moneys are now accounted for; jobs, to pass current, must be highly varnished, and a decree, though not yet published, has gone forth against the evil deeds of grand juries. Nay, it is even allowed to tell the world that the Irish Church Establishment must yield to common sense and public interest ; and that it is too revolting to allot the tenth of the lands and produce of the most fertile, but poorest nation in Europe, to a clergy whose followers do not amount to even a tithe of the people. There is, finally, a tribunal already established by public opinion in Ireland, and though - it may not yet be formally
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recognised, as the custom mo-runt, or v index injurlarum of the country, it undoubtedly already exercises the powers and privileges of a supreme court.”
After all, this is not much stronger than what honest Protestants and Conservatives have said of the system of Protestant ascendancy, which has inflicted upon the empire the danger and disgrace of the Irish Difficulty. The Rev. Dr. Mortimer O’Sullivaii, a great champion of Protestantism, in a speech delivered in ] 834, said : — “ It is accounted righteous to abet and screen the murderer — a crime and a stigma which attaints the blood, to assist law in bringing the mur derer to justice ! And here I would ask how can it be explained that he who thus aids the law — ‘ the informer,’ as he is styled, and the well-remembered and deeply execrated name of the traitor who in old days ‘sold the pass,’ shall be held in equal detestation, unless there be through the entire Roman Catholic people a practical persuasion that now, as in the days of Cromwell, the state of Ireland is a state of war, that England has no rights, except those of a foreign and hostile country ? A gallant general, Sir Hussey Vivian, has expressed his amazement at the indifference to crime, and the insensibility of conscience to the guilt of murder, which he regards as a characteristic of the disturbances prevailing in Ireland. This peculiar and abominable char acteristic he confessed himself incapable to understand or explain. It has, however, an explanation, and but one. The atrocities committed in these disturbances are not, as they have been called, ‘driftless and desultory;’ they are incidents in a systematic war — a war which is wasting the country by slow combustion ; or they are the punishments inflicted by competent and acknowledged authority. Con science is no more concerned in them than in the case of a public execution, or in the crowning charge at Waterloo. What to the uninstructed seem assassinations or perjuries, are to the organised peasantry in Ireland no more than successful ambuscades and military stratagem.”
Another powerful champion of Protestantism, a Fellow of Trinity College, the Rev. Mr. Boyton, addressing a public
598 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
meeting in 1834, said : — “And here I will stop to say, I will put forward to this great meeting what I have constantly inculcated, what I have continually put for\vard, what I will persist to reiterate, that in seeking the cause of your inse curity, of what is shaking every property, arid privilege, and law, to its foundation ; you are not to look to Popery, not to disaffection, not to democracy. You must go deeper, and seek it in the destitution and agony of the population.
“ There is no government of Ireland, or for Ireland. Ire land is considered only as it furnishes a battle-field or a pretext for English parties. Irish questions with English parties are a weapon to assail an adversary, or a means to remunerate an auxiliary ; but a government with a view to the real interests of the country, the security of property and life, the civilization, the improvement and support of the population, Ireland has none.”
How strange and sad that we should have the same story told about Ireland from age to age ! Is there some fatality in the seed of the Irish Church ? Lord Clare seemed to hint something of the kind in his speech at the time of the Union, when he said that “the new colony of the new settlers was composed of all the various sects which then infested England. Independents, Anabaptists, Seceders, Brownists, Socinians, Milleimarians, and dissenters of every description, many of them infected with the leaven of demo cracy, poured into Ireland, and were put into possession of the ancient inheritance of its inhabitants. And I speak,” he said, “ with great personal respect of the men, when. I state that a very considerable portion of the opulence and power of this kingdom of Ireland continues at this day in the descendants of those motley adventurers.” If this seed of the Irish Church did not produce an ingrained perversity and natural fanaticism, its members could be reasoned into a state of mind that would render compromise possible, and bring Irish society under the influence of equity and Christian charity. Lord Dufferin in his great speech, delivered in the House of Lords, said: — “That wider atmosphere of discontent of which Fenianism is only the nucleus, and which, though extensive,
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 599
will be found in the end extremely attenuated, must be at tributed partly indeed to a traditional hatred of this country, engendered by wrongs long since abolished and atoned for.” Some of those wrongs are abolished, it is true, but are they atoned fur? Has there been anything like restitution or compensation to the Roman Catholic majority of this nation? There have been important steps taken in the direction of justice and equality; but what measure of this kind has been passed of which the members of the Established Church do not enjoy the advantage, as well as Roman Catholics, in addition to their own monopoly and special privileges ? Are not the ascendancy of the Church and the absolute power of the aristocracy still in. full force, only mitigated and tempered by the spirit of the time? Coarse tyranny has giATeii place to the polished arts of despotism. An agent does not now knock down the tenants, or whip them, but he can subject them to mental torture, and make them feel the iron enter their souls in the quietest manner. But his underlings are not always gentle in their speech and manner to the tenantry. If Lord Dufferm, disguised in a frieze coat as a peasant, were to mix with the crowd on rent day in an Irish agent’s office, even on the estate of one of those great English proprietors, of whose management so much has been said, I believe his blood would boil with indig nation at the abject bondage in which they live, and the insolence with which they are treated. The noble owners, of course, are not aware of the tyranny, corruption, espion age, distrust, and degradation which spread their hateful influence over the Queen’s subjects on their estates. They do not know that they are so oppressively over-managed as to extinguish every spark of freedom and manly indepen dence, or that it is this state of tilings which throws the tenantry upon the protection of their priests, and gives to the latter their political power. Much has been said about middlemen and their system of subletting, &c. But it should be remembered that they formed the only middle class in many parts of the country, the only resident gentry, except the clergy, who were generally their kinsmen. They
GOO IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
were the only employers of labour, and generally their work people got at least good diet in their kitchens. They were almost the only persons who built good homes, and planted trees, and fenced, relieving the country of the baldness which is so unpleasant to the traveller. It is true they lived beyond their means, relying on rack-rents, and that they imitated those above them in their love of dogs and horses, and in their sporting propensities. 1 happen to know a large estate, belonging to an absentee English lord, which had a great number of these small gentry, a highly respectable middle class, who held by long leases, and had built good gentle men’s residences, in which their families had been for gene rations. The agent did not like their independence or their politics; and so, when the leases expired, they were turned off, and their comfortable dwellings transferred to men of inferior status and meaner habits who had got money, and could treat the bailiffs and fee the agents or their relatives with bank notes or thorough-bred hunters, fat sheep or handsome heifers. Formerly on that estate all farmers held by lease, now no leases are given, and on a late occasion the criminal business of the Quarter Sessions could not be pro ceeded with because all the grand jurors were tenants-at-will on that nobleman’s estate. This is the end of a fine race of freeholders, whose farms and dwellings have been given to a sycophantic, servile set of yearly tenants, who cannot sell one another a load of hay or let the grazing of a sheep without permission of the agent, who has spies about prying into the affairs of every family to see whether they violate the code of vexatious laws which he has arbitrarily im posed. I am assured that on some of the great estates of English absentees in the south, the tenants-at-will are ham pered in a similar way, some agents requiring that their consent should be obtained by each tenant to the marriage of his children on pain of eviction. I know, from convers ing with the tenants in every part of Ireland, that the distrust and dread they feel towards “the office,” is not merely traditional, but is the effect of an unfeeling, exact ing, vindictive, economic management, which rises as a
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 601
dismal wall of separation between the tenants and their landlords.
There is a good illustration of the working of the law, which the landlords have made for their own advantage ex clusively, at present before the public in Ulster. Tenant right exists there, “but it is not legalised. It is a right, however, which sells for £8 or £10 an acre, and which every honest landlord recognises, and -muxt, indeed, recognise ; for one of the witnesses before the Devon Commission, himself an agent, said, that its refusal would convert Down into a Tipperary. Well, some little Belfast “ merchant” in Anne- street makes money and buys a townland in the Iiieuinbered Estates Court. The instinct of Irish landlordism springs up in him at once. He writes his ukase to the tenantry from Brighton, or a yacht club, and requires them to pay double rent — double the rent paid for similar land on the sur rounding estates — or quit. The tenants are respectable ; their families have lived for ages in the happy homes, which they built and improved for themselves and their children, relying on the just custom of tenant right. But the new land lord from Anne-street cares nothing about tenant right, and so he confiscates all those improvements, and destroys those homes with a stroke of his pen. The law allows him to do so. Public opinion is against him, the neighbouring gentry cries shame. But he lives at Brighton, and belongs to a yacht club, and he will allow no man to interfere with his legal rights. Now, if the Legislature legalised tenant right, this landlord, and the English nobleman to whom I have alluded, should pay the tenant for his improvements, or allow him to sell them for the market value.
Mr. Whiteside, the present Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, was charmed with the effects of fixity of tenure in Tuscany. “ In what state,” he asks, “ is the agri culture of Tuscany at the present day ? The inquiry may be quickly answered : in the highest perfection ; the whole country is a garden. It is proved that the tenants holding by leases are prosperous ; the occupiers of patches at a rent, miserable ; while it must be carefully remembered that the
602 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
small farmers referred to as successful and productive in their industry, are proprietors, not rack-rent tenants. It is not creditable to the collective wisdom of England, to attempt nothing on a bold and comprehensive scale for the social improvement of Ireland. And as the evils under which she groans, or many of them, spring from the mode in which the land is held, and miserably, or not at all culti vated, or suffered to lie \vaste, the attention of the Legis lature should l;e directed to the means calculated to remove and abate these deplorable evils. If the existence of what is called tenant right be productive of good in Ulster, the principle should be fearlessly applied to the other provinces.” It must in justice be said that the Conservative Govern ment of which Mr. Whiteside was a leading member, did attempt to legalise tenant right by the retrospective clause of their Bill; and on this fact Mr. Butt lays great stress. He says : — “ Only thirty-one members of the House of Com mons could be found to oppose the clause which secured compensation for past improvements to the tenant. A Bill containing that clause was read a third time, without a division, and was carried to the House of Lords, with the sanction of two Cabinets, with the authority of the leadino-
v e>
statesmen of all parties, and with the almost unanimous approval of the House of Commons. If that clause meant anything but open spoliation, it meant this, that the tenantry of Ireland had created a property in the land, which in justice and conscience, belonged, to them, and which, there fore, legislation should step in to protect. To this hour that property is left unprotected, and in the thirteen years which have passed, numbers of tenants have been driven out and deprived of that very property, which the ministers of the Sovereign had solemnly declared was theirs by a sacred right. Almost every member representing an Ulster county who was present gave his vote for extending to the rest of Ireland some portion of the principle of Ulster tenant right. Sydney Herbert, Sir James Graham, Sir William Moles worth, Mr. Cardwell, and Mr. Wilson Patten, recorded their votes on the same side. Sir Alexander Cockburn gave to that
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. (J03
clause the weight of the ability and learning which have since placed him in the highest seat of English justice. Mr. Napier and Mr. Whiteside, the Irish law officers of the late Administration, combined with the legal representatives of the existing Government in adding to it the authority of those who may fairly be said to have represented Irish jurisprudence in the House. The English law officers de liberately accorded to it their support. The representatives of the landed interest assented to it. In no Parliament that has met in »our generation, would it have been possible to have accumulated a greater weight of authority upon, any question involving the social ethics of legislation. And all this great authority emphatically and deliberately sanctioned the declaration then made by the Great council of the kino--
•/ o
doni, that the property created by the industry of the tenant belonged of right and in justice to himself, and that it was the duty of the Legislature to protect it by law. There is nothing in the subsequent history of the measure to detract from, there is something to add to, the effect of these transactions of 1853. In 185-i Lord Aberdeen’s ministry submitted the whole question to a Committee of the House of Lords. In 1855 that ministry fell before the vote of the House of Commons censuring the management of the Crimean expedition. Lord Aberdeen with his imme diate friends retired from office, and Lord Palmerstoii became the head of a new administration. In that session a Bill was introduced by Mr. Sergeant Slice, very nearly identical with that of Mr. Napier. Lord Palmerstoii adopted it as a Government measure, defending the retention of the ‘ retrospective clause.’ On the 3rd of July, 1855, that clause was again made the subject of a division. It was rejected by a majority of 138 to 102. After this division the Tenants’ Compensation Bill, apparently with the tacit con sent of all parties, was suffered to drop.”
I entirely agree with what Mr. Butt so ably urges as to the necessity of doing justice to the cultivators of the soil, especially in. the principle, which Irish landlords seem so reluctant to admit, that the rights of landed property should be subordinate to the interests of society, instead of the
604 IRELAND ANT) HER CHURCHES.
interests and the very existence of society being subordinate to the rights of property — an utterly revolutionary principle. Mr. Butt says : — “ I felt that it was indispensable, even for the sake of Imperial interests, that some such measure should be passed, if Ireland was not to continue for ever the disgrace and the weakness of the British Crown. I was further satisfied that I proposed nothing inconsistent with any real or true proprietary right. I knew that I Avas not proposing any control on the absolute dominion of the land lord greater than that which had been already enforced in Ulster, by that custom of tenant right of which that province is justly proud. I suggested in substance, if not literally, that the fixity of tenure which the custom of tenant right gives to the occupier in Downshire should be legalised in the districts where it does exist, and established by law in. the parts of Ireland where it does not. I was satisfied that such a measure would be one in the interest of the landed proprietors themselves — that nothing short of it would give peace to Ireland, or reconcile the consciences of the mass of the people to the settlement of property established by con quest in this island. I saw plainly that while the occupier continued in the state of serfdom in which insecurity of tenure leaves him, it was impossible for any class in Ireland to be prosperous. I saw with equal clearness that the dis affection, nay, the hatred to England, which the present condition of land tenure has caused among the Irish people is creating a danger to the very existence of England’s greatness, which is not the less formidable because the pres sure of the present system of land laws is driving the old Celtic race to carry their fortunes and their resentments to far distant lands.”‘‘‘
Allowing for every other favourable influence, it must be admitted that tenant right has done much — very much for Ulster. This has been shown very clearly by Mr. Gustavus Tuite Dalton,f who Avrote under the noin de plume of “ Philocelt” in the Daily News. Mr. Dalton is a magistrate,
* “ Land Tenure in Ireland.” Preface to 3rd edition. t “ Irish Peers and Iri?h Peasants.” An answer to Lord DufFerin and the Earl of Rosse.
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION.
well acquainted with the agricultural classes in Ireland. He says : — “ I turn to the statistics again, and I rind (page x) that the total number of farms above one acre decreased, between 1841 and 1864, by 15’1 per cent, in Leinster, 29’9 per cent, in Minister, 22 ‘6 per cent, in Connaught, and only by 14’2 per cent, in Ulster. So that, other things being equal, though there is little difference between Leinster and Ulster, the emigration of occupiers from Minister was about two to one, from Coiinatight as three to two, compared with Ulster. But other things arc not equal. It is not fair to take Leinster into consideration at all, for there, owing to the general nature of the soil, better adapted for grazing than tillage, a good deal in the way of consolidation had been effected before the potato famine. It should be remembered that if the smallness of the holdings were the sole cause of the emigration of the occupiers, it ought to have been nearly twice as great from Ulster as from the other provinces, as the following figures taken from the statistics, page Ixvii, will prove. Leinster — area, 4,876,21 1 acres ; number of holdings in 1804, 104,438. Minister— area, 6,096,990 acres ; number of holdings, 114,921. Ulster — area, 5,478,867 acres ; number of holdings, 203,066. Connaught — area, 432,043 acres; holdings, 120,698. Thus, according to Lord Dufferin’s argument, the emigration of farmers ought to have been, from Ulster, at least two to one as compared with Minister, whereas the proportions are reversed. Has tenant right nothing to do with this ? As regards Ireland, Lord Dufferin, if he had given a little more thought to the statistics from which he draws his conclusions, would have seen that, although there are striking local exceptions, the more dense, on the whole, the population, the more prosperous the dis trict. The holdings are smallest in Armagh, where they only average fourteen acres. Armagh is one of the most prosperous counties in Ireland, arid its county town is one of the very few inland towns which can be said to be in a thriving state. Lord Dufferin himself says, in his last letter, that ‘ nowhere in Great Britain does there exist a more orderly or contented body of men than in Ulster.’ Now, the
606 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
population of Ulster is 258 to the square mile of arable land. In Minister it is only 168.”
In France, notwithstanding the bad effects of the compul sory subdivision of land among all the children, the feeling of proprietorship works wonders in the way of industry and thrift. According to M. de Lavergiie, as quoted by Mr. J. S. Mill, “ since 1789, the total produce of French agriculture has doubled. Profits and wages have both increased in the same, and rout in a still greater ratio. M. de Lavergne, whose impartiality is one of his greatest merits, is, moreover, so far in this instance from having a case to make out, that he is labouring to show, not how much French agriculture has accomplished, but how much remains for it still to do. We have required, he says, no less than seventy years to bring into cultivation two million hectares (live million acres) of waste land, to suppress half our fallows, increase our population 30 per cent., our wages 100 per cent., our rent 151 per cent.”
I should be ready to agree with Lord Dufferin, that the Irish population is too large for its resources, if the soil were properly cultivated. But I see that it is not half cultivated. I see that in a large portion of it, naturally rich, nothing grows but what unassisted nature produces, without draining, subsoiling, or manuring, and I know that it could be most profitably cultivated, with a sufficient tenure, farms of moderate size and a fair rent. To diminish the population further -would be to diminish all that consti tutes the well-being and strength of a community. The Daily Nev:s reasons conclusively on this point : — “ Assuming that the present gross produce of the soil under cultivation in Ireland is the most that the land could yield under any system, and that the area of available land does not admit of increase, Lord Dutierin finds no difficulty in proving that the expatriation of the Irish people must go on for many years. But there is another side to the problem, which he overlooks — namely, whether, under a different system of rural economy, the land now under tillage might not support more people in greater comfort than the reduced population
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 607
who now live upon it ; and whether, with proper encourage ment, a large quantity of the land now waste might not be reclaimed ? According to Sir Richard Griffith, a million and a half acres now abandoned are capable of cultivation. Even this estimate, which suggests that possibly there may bo room for a system of home colo •iization within Ireland itself, is probably under the mark, as being relative to a system which offers but slight incentives to such enter prises. If Sir Richard Griffith had surveyed in its original condition the tracts of land which the small farmers and peasant proprietors of Belgium have converted into farms as productive as any in Europe, he would, probably, have pronounced them unfit for cultivation. Lord Dulieriii is annoyed that the class which he defends with admirable skill and good temper should be attacked ; and we are far from justifying the animus of some of treir assailants. But the Irish landlords, as the representatives of a system which is charged with pernicious consequences, are justly open to criticism. The disregard of their obligations in the past filled Ireland with a population vastly in excess of what the undeveloped resources of the country could support. The existing settlement, in the obstacles which it opposes to the gradual growth of a class of yeomen and peasant pro prietors, and to security of tenure, operates, though more mildly, to bring about the same result. Ought the people to be expatriated till their numbers are reduced to the requirements of the system ? Or might not the system be modified so as to leave room for some portion of those who are now driven abroad? The strength of the empire is undoubtedly diminished, for military and industrial pur poses, by this drain on the population, and this in two ways
for what we lose the United States gain. Those who
might be friends at home become enemies abroad. The language of Grattan has a wider application in our day than it had in his own. ‘ What we trample upon in Ireland stings us in America.’ We are not at liberty lightly to assume that the economic interests of Ireland and the general interests of the empire are irreconcileable ; nor
608 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
without investigation to reject the presumptions supplied by foreign analogies, that under a different system a larger population might be supported in Ireland in greater comfort than the present dwindling population enjoys. For, though the first half of Lord Dutferin’s proposition is indisputably true, that, Ireland being what it is, emigration is a blessing to those who go, the second half, that it is a blessing to those who stay at home, is by no means so certain.”
Very forcible and pertinent, also, are the following remarks by the Spectator on a question which the events of every day render more deeply interesting and urgent : — “ Unless the fears of the propertied classes in Ireland be grossly exaggerated, and the anxiety of the Government be exces sive, it is certain that since the agitation for Catholic Emancipation there has not been so much serious mischief brewing there as there is now. We are told — with so much energy and consistency that we have at length come to believe — that the peasantry of three-fourths of Ireland are disaffected almost to a man, and that the larger part by far of the small tenant-farmers harbour no good feeling towards the Government. If this is the only result of diminishing the superfluous labour by nearly two-thirds, how can wehope that by sending away the remaining third we shall extirpate the discontent which has not as yet been visibly diminished? If you work an economical remedy earnestly and success fully for twenty years — successfully, that is, so far as getting out of it all that economically you can hope to get out of it — and yet produce a moral or political result that is simply nil, can any inference be surer than that though, in applying this remedy or letting it work you may be doing quite right, you are not radically touching the malady you want to cure ? Suppose a physician had ascribed in his own mind a certain brain disease to want of proper nourishment, and had applied the appropriate remedy with such effect that the patient was growing fatter every week, and was visibly approaching the time when he would have as much flesh on his bones as he could conveniently, and with full regard to health, carry about him — and that in spite of this success the cerebral
REMEDIES AND RECONCILIATION. 009
irritation not only did not diminish, but even seemed, if anything, to increase — would a really able physician hold to his theory, and say that he was right in ascribing the cerebral excitement to insufficient nourishment ? Would he not rather admit that the disease was deeper seated than he had supposed, and that though it might be perfectly right to go on with the treatment until the patient was as stout as health required, yet that this was clearly insufficient for the main root of the malady, and that any hope of a cure, if there was one, must lie in some other direction ? Such seems to us, we confess, the legitimate inference from Lord Dufferin’s admirably stated argument.”
Lord Naas’s Bill is good to a certain extent, but if it be came law it would fail to give satisfaction and to cure the evil, because it does not touch the seat of the disease, which is precariousness of tenure. No man will labour earnestly and perseveringiy without an assurance that he or his chil dren will reap the fruits of his industry. It is the want of this which makes a wilderness of the richest regions of the East. Garibaldi once asked a Greek peasant why he did not gather up the precious fruit he saw rotting on the ground. His answer was, because if he did his Turkish landlord would come and carry them away. It is the daily imperceptible industry of himself and his family that the Irish farmer wants to have secured. This cannot be esti mated beforehand. It is a thing which the Board of Works cannot deal with. What is wanted is, that assuming a fair rent, with which every just landlord should be satisfied, the tenant might be able to sell his improvements for their market value on leaving the farm. There is much said about freedom of dealing in connexion with land. But what is the fact ? A great portion of Lord Naas’s Leasing Bill consists in getting rid of impediments with which the law has tied up the owners of land ; and we know that the removal of such impediments was the main object of the Incumbered Estates Act. The Legislature has interposed for the protection of future owners by the law of primo geniture, to keep up a territorial aristocracy, and to maintain
2R
610 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
the hereditary principle, which, I grant, is a Conservative principle; but it is still more Conservative in the tenant than the landlord, in the many than the few. Yet, instead of encouraging that principle in the occupiers of the land, instead of giving them inducements to transmit an. inheri tance to their children and grandchildren, the law does everything possible to destroy it, and to prevent the agricul tural population from getting any hold in the soil. On the contrary, they would pluck up every root except that of the landlord, who, instead of being supported by the ramifications of a well-rooted tenure in the farmers, will be likely to fall before the first blast of revolution.
The tenants, therefore, have not confidence in the Bill of Lord Naas, because, unlike Mr. Chichester Fortescue, he has no true and earnest sympathy with the people. He is too full of the instinct of the class to which he belongs. One of the ablest of the advocates of the tenants, the editor of the Ulster Observer, thus writes on the two measures : — “ Tenant right has been treated in much the same fashion as Reform. When Mr. Fortescue introduced a Bill on this subject, the Tory benches rang again with denunciations of it, and the loud objurgations of Mr. Whiteside, and the per sistent lamentations of Lord Naas, were not only violent, but had a strong flavour of malicious disappointment in them. The present Chief Secretary stigmatized the late Chief Secretary’s Bill as revolutionary and communistic, and he most emphatically repudiated, as a complete confis cation of proprietorial rights, the principle which acknow ledged the tenants’ claim to compensation for improvements made without the consent of the landlord. He has become a sudden convert to the doctrines which he almost fanati cally opposed, and is willing to recognise the justice of compensation, on certain conditions. But here, again, the hollo wness of Tory legislation appears, just as in the case of Reform. Nothing is conceded which is of any value; nothing is proposed which is worth acceptance. On the contrary, the concessions turn out, on examination, to be a ratification of the arbitrary and injurious laws already in existence, and
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the proposals are only complicated arrangements which would increase existing difficulties, and add to existing burthens. t Lord Naas’s Bill is essentially bad, inasmuch as it encourages improvements for the benefit of the landlord, without affording any security to the tenant. The tenant who, under this Bill, would effect improvements l)y means of loans from the Board of Works, would, as regards his liabilities, be in the position of a mortgagee, while, in his relations to his landlord, he would be simply in the position of that most abject and helpless of all creatures — a tenaiit- at-will. The landlord is, therefore, the sole gainer by the proposed measure ; for the Government proposes to increase the value of his estate by advancing to the tenants sums of money, to be expended on improvements. These sums are charged, not to the landlord, but on the soil, and the landlord is thus relieved from the only liability which could possibly restrain the exercise of his unfettered powers. At present, when a tenant-at-will improves his farm, the landlord almost invariably makes a corresponding increase in the rent. The very same power is preserved to the proprietor under Lord Naas’s Bill ; and this, coupled with the fact that the money advanced for the improvements is rendered a charge upon the land, and not upon the landlord, would only aggravate the grievances from which the tenants of Ireland at present suffer.
“The machinery of the Bill is much more objectionable than its principle ; and the more closely the details are examined the more impracticable and worthless the entire measure appears. The very preliminaries which a tenant is obliged to go through, in order to obtain a loan from the Board of Works, are sufficient to deter him from making an application, and the results of the application, if granted, would be more than sufficient to make him repent of the attractive but unprofitable step. He must first describe the contemplated changes— calculate their cost, and estimate their value. If his proposal be accepted, he must then virtually place himself under the inspection and control of a Govern ment agent, who will have the power of superintending the
2 R 2
612 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
work, directing its progress, specifying the manner in which it is to be carried out ; retarding, altering, or arranging it as he thinks proper: certifying for its execution and completion, and regulating the time and occasion for every instalment that may be required. In fact, the tenant would be a mere labourer on his own farm, working under the command of a Government steward, and effecting changes of which the landlord alone would reap the benefit.
“Nor is this all the difficulty the tenant would have to encounter in taking advantage of Lord Naas’s rather ques tionable benefits. His lordship does not leave him to the tender mercies of the Board of Works alone. He compels him, in every instance, to serve notice on the landlord and apprize him of the contemplated changes; and in three instances the landlord has the absolute right of negativing the improvements. Now, any one acquainted with the condition of Ireland, and with the relations existing between landlord and tenant, will readily comprehend that the fact of an Irish tenant being obliged to serve on his landlord a notice of his intention to make improvements, would have precisely the same effect as a positive prohibi tion to attempt any such improvements. Nor does the obstacle rest here. With an ingenuity that is by no means creditable, Lord Naas concedes to the landlord a veto on every point that could possibly limit his present extreme powers, and denies him a veto on the points on which oppo sition would be unprofitable. Thus the tenant, always with the approval of the “middleman “ authority — the represen tative of the Board of Works — may be at liberty to drain, to reclaim waste land, and to remove old and useless fences ; but — and let the public mark this, the tenant cannot, without the consent of the landlord, make fences, make farm-roads, or erect farm-buildings. To some these may appear plausible if not reasonable restric tions. To our mind they are the most insidious stipulations to which an unsuspecting people were ever exposed. They are — and we have no hesitation in declaring it — smooth stepping-stones to the easy extermination of a million of
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our population. There is a Machiavellian cunning iu the design which it is not difficult to fathom, although it is difficult adequately to denounce it. What does it aim at but the utter ruin of the small formers, and the speedy conversion of Ireland into a sheepwalk for England ? The small farmer may drain the ground, may reclaim the bog, may remove the stones, may tear up ‘ old and useless’ fences — in a word, he may prepare his farm of fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, forty, or fifty acres for amalga mation with an adjoining form, and thus forward the darling object of Irish landlords and English statesmen. But let
him be ever so industrious — let him be ever so energetic
let him expend ever so much money on the improvement of the soil — he dare not, of his own will, do that which would give him indirectly a claim to the soil, and a right to live on it. He dare not make fences which would hedge in the little farm ; he dare not make roads which would constitute boundaries ; lie dare not erect the buildings which would answer the purpose of a home. No, Lord Naas intends that the remnant of the Irish farmers will be employed for a few years in works which will enable the landlords to accommo date fat graziers, and enable the Government to gloat over an emigration which they deem necessary to the pacification of Ireland and the welfare of England.”
Let the Legislature attach the people to the soil, and they will attach them to the institutions of the country. Let them trust the people, and the people will trust them, and not be ungrateful. Ulster has tenant right, and I know (for I lived amongst them for many years) that the Presbyterian clergy and people — setting aside “ Popery “- are liberal in their politics. Yet every representative of Ulster in the House of Commons is a Conservative, and they are nearly all connected with the aristocracy. Why ? Because the landlords are resident and just, taking a personal interest in their tenantry, and instead of relying on the power of law and coercion, they rely on the power of sympathy and kindness. Hence their tenants follow them to the hustings.
614 IRELAND AND HER CHURCHES.
What, after all, is the main difficulty about the settlement of the land question ? It is that the landlords cannot bring themselves to give up their unconstitutional control over the tenants’ vote, or to relinquish a feudal power at war with the civilization of the age, and incompatible with the safety of society.
[INDEX,
t 615 ]
INDEX.
Page
Abbeys, suppression of, .84 AchilJ Island, . . . 391 Adams, Bishop, . .346 Agar, Archbishop, . . 340 A gar, Hon. and Rev. James, 227 Aghoure parish, . . 2$’.} Albert Chapel, Dublin, . 177 Alcock, Rev. John, . . 201) Alexander, Bishop, . . 353 Allen, Archbishop, . .37 Althorpo, Lord, . .143
Ancient Irish Church, . 28 Anderson, Rev. William, . 474 Andrew, Rev. Mr. . .201 Anomalous state of Irish
Church, . . .490
Apjolm, Rev. M. L., . . 329 Arbutlmot, Bishop, . .354 Ardagh diocese, . 481, 482
Arclamine parish, . .280 Ardbraccan Church, . .253 Ardfert & Aghadoe diocese, 348 Ardfert and Aghadoe, sta tistics of, ... 350 Ardnurcher parish, . .240 Armagh, Archbishop of, . 35 Armagh Cathedral, . . 450 Armagh city, . . .450 Armagh diocese, statistics
of, ... 449,452
Armagh diocesan seminary, 456 Armagh See, . . . 430 Armagh R. C. diocese, . 454 Armagh R. C. diocese, sta tistics, . . . .458 Association for discounten ancing Vice, . . .150
Atkiny, Dean, . Averill, Bishop,
Page
289, 303 . 346
. 466 . 249 . 329 . 240 . 228 . 285 400, 416 346, 353 . 591 . 475 . 463
Bagot, Rev. Daniel,
Baker, Rev. R. B.,
Baker, Rev. W.,
Bally loughioe parish,
Balscadan parish,
Baltinglass parish,
Bandon, Lord, .
Barnard, Bishop,
Barring-ton, Matthew
Bedell, Bishop, .
Belfast churches,
Belfast presbytery rebuked, 74
Belfast town, . . . 462
Benefices, statistics of, 142, 484
Bemi, Rev. Mr., . .401
Bennett, Bishop, . 336, 341
Beresford, Archbishop, of
Tuani, . 365, 368, 438, 448 Beresford, Primate, . .434 Beresford, Rev. Marcus G., 439 Berkeley, Bishop, . .340 Bermingham, Dean, . .184 Bernard, Bishop, . 365, 414 Bernard, Hon. Richd. Boyle, 290 Bethesda Church, Dublin, . 208 Bishoprics, Inspection of, . 160 Bishoprics, tax on, . .148 Bishops, number of, . .526 Bisset, Bishop, . . .470 Black abbey, . . .311 Black Oath, the, . 68
Blackburne, Francis, on
evictions, . . .591 Boulter, Primate, . .433
GIG
INDEX.
Page
Bourke, Archbishop, . .365 Bourke, Hon. Joseph, . 29C Bowyer, Sir George, . 4
Boyle, Archbishop, . . 3 Boyle, Bishop, . . .335 Boyle, Michael, D.D., . . 31 £ Boyne, battle of, . . 235 Bradshaw, Rev. M’Nevin, . 28C Brady, Rev. Dr., on the suc cession of Irish Bishops, . 41 Brady, Dr. Hugh, . .232 Bramhall, Bishop, . 64, 67 Brandon, Rev. John, . 241
Brennan, Rev. Mr., . .325 Brinkley, Bishop, . .341 Brougham, Rev. Henry, . 283 Brown, Archbishop, . 37, 85 Brown, Bishop, . .336
Brown, Rev. Denis, . .301 Browne, Archbishop, . 365
Browne, Rev. John, . .228 Bryan, Mr. Butler, . . 278 Burscough, Bishop, . . 346 Butt, Isaac, Q.C., plea for
the Celtic race, . .586 Butt, Isaac, Q.C., on fixity of
tenure, . . . .604 Butson, Bishop, . .354 Byrne, Rev. James, 472,473,520
Callan union, . . .284
Carlile, Rev. Dr., . . 109
Carlisle, Earl of, . .579
Carlow Cathedral, . .118
Carmichael, Rev. F., . .210
Carroll, Rev. H. G., . . 229
Carroll, Rev. W. G., . .184
Casey, Bishop, . . .345
Cashel, Archbishop of, t 481
Cashel diocese, . . 315, 326 Cashel diocese, statistics, . 327
Castle Chapel, Dublin, . 170
Castledermot union, . .229
Castlerickard parish, . . 241
Cathedrals in Dublin, 167, 184
Caulfield, Rev. T. G., . 240
Causes of discontent, . .590
Cavan town, . . .482
Page
Census of Church, 1834, . 142 Chappel, William, . .171 Charlemont, Lord, on land lord and tenant, . .590 Charter schools, . . 434
Chenevix, Bishop, . .353 Chichester, Sir Arthur, on
Ulster in 1600, . . 89 Chimiery, Bishop, . . 353 Christ Church Cathedral,
Dublin, . . 30, 162
Christ Church Cathedral,
Dublin, livings in gift of, 197 Church and State, separa tion of, . . . .491 Church accommodation in
Dublin diocese, . .225 Church Cess, . . .134 Church Education Society’s
schools, . . . 435
Church missions, . 399, 400 Church, statistics of the, . 393 Church Temporalities Act, 147 Churchtowii parish, . .241 Clare election, . . .120 Clare, Lord, his speech at
the Union, . . .598 Clayton, Bishop, . .336 Cleaver, Bishop, . 277, 336 Clogher Cathedral, . .452 Cloncurry, Lord, on agita tion, . . . .129 Cloiifert, Dean of, . .472 Clonfert diocese, . .351 Cloiifert diocese, statistics, . 359 Clonfert R. C. diocese, . 427 Clongill parish, . . 252
Cloiileigh parish, . .473 Cloiimaciioise Bishopric, 232, 234 oyiie cathedral, . .339 Cloyne diocese, . . 333, 339 Jloyne diocese, statistics, . 343 togan, Rev. A., . .111 Collections for charitable
purposes in Dublin, 1815, 106 Collins, Rev. M., P.P., . 534 /oiinaught Missions, . 395, 396,
399
INDEX.
617
Page
Conuemara, . . 397, 399 Connor, Archdeacon of, .464 Connor diocese, statistics, . 465 Cooke, Rev. Dr., . .83 Cooper, Rev. W. Haweis, 105 Cooper, Rev. William, . 105 Coote, Rev. Ralph, . .241 Cork, Bishop of, . .210 Cork Cathedral, . .338 Cork diocese, . . .333 Cork diocese, statistics, 338, 342 Cork R. C. diocese, statis tics, . . . .344 Crime, diminution of, . 579 Crolly, Archbishop, . .454 Cromwell, Henry, . . 76 Cromwellian settlement, . 585 Crushing policy of England, 581 Cullen, Cardinal, . 456, 585 Curwen, Archbishop, . 37
Dallas, Rev. Mr. . 400
Dalton, Gustavus T., on
tenant right, . . . 605 Daly, Bishop, . . 322, 330 Daly, Rev. Joseph M. .241 Daly, Warden, . . .385 Danes, the, . . .32 D’Arcy, Rev. Hyacinth, . 410 Davis, Sir John, Case of
Ireland stated, . .17 Dawson, Rev. Arthur, 161, 208 Day, Rev. Maurice F., .211 Delany, Rev. William, D.D., 343 Denvir, Bishop, . .467 Derby, Earl of, . .127
Derenzy, Rev. John, . 329
Deny Cathedral, . . 468 Derry diocese, statistics, . 471 Desmond, Earl of, . .321 Dickinson, Rev. H., . . 195 Dickson, Rev. Richard, . 349 Digby, Bishop, . . .346 Dill, Rev. Richard, . .108 Dingle colony, . . .395 Disaffection of peasantry, . 608 Disendowment of the Irish
Church, . . .493
Page
Dissenters, number in Dub-
lin> - . . 106, 108 Dobbin, Rev. Dr., . .239 Dobbin, Rev. Dr., on the
Roman Catholics, . .544 Dolan, Rev. Mr., . .367 Donagh, Bishop of Dublin, 129 Donagheady parish, . .473 Donaghpatrick parish, . 237 Donnellan, Bishop, . .364 Donoghmore parish, . .281 Donovan, Rev. Solomon, . 281 Dorrian, Bishop, . .467 Dowdall, Primate, . .432 Down, Connor, and Dro-
more diocese, . . 459
Down, Connor, and Dro-
more diocese, statistics, . 464 Down and Connor R. C.
diocese,. . . .467 Dowries, Bishop, . . 335 Downpatrick cathedral, . 460 Doyle, Bishop, . . 117, 455 Doyle, Bishop, on Irish mis- government, . . .595 Draper, Bishop, . . 475 Dromore, Dean of, . . 466 Dromore R. C. diocese, . 467 Drumcondra parish, . . 229 Drumcree union, . . 242 Drummoiid, Mr., . .577 Dublin, Archbishop of, 35, 160 Dublin city, progress of, . 169 Dublin churches, statistics,
163, 206
Dublin curacies, value of, . 205 Dublin diocese, . . . 160 Dublin Evening Post, . 382 Dublin parish churches, . 170 Dublin, suburbs of, . .224 Dufterin, Lord, letters on
Ireland, . . 581, 598 Duleek union, . . .242 Dundas, Bishop, . .460 Dunne, Rev. Robert H., .242 Dunshaughlin parish, . Ill
Eade, Rev. Mr.,
. 400
018
INDEX.
Page
460 473
473 482 346 301
99 256
14 299 300 300 282
214
Pago
Gotigh, Bishop, . . .346
Government of Ireland, . 597
Grand Jury system, . .594
Grangegorman parish, . 202
Graves, Bishop, . .347
Greene, Rev. William, . 184 Gregg, Bishop, . . 209, 391
Gregg, Rev. Thomas, .191
Gregg, Rev. Tresham, . 182
Grey, Lord, . . . 145
Griffin, Bishop, . .347
Griffin, Rev. John Nash, .210 Guinness, Benjamin Lee,
M.P., . 164
Echlin, Bishop, Edwards, Rev. Arthur W., Edwards, Rev. William, . Elphin diocese, . .481, Ellington, Bishop, . 277, Emly, Dean of. Emlyn, Rev. Tlios., trial of, Endowed schools, English Pale, . Eimiscorthy castle, Enniscorthy cathedral, Enniscorthy church, . Enniscorthy parish, . Episcopal chapels, Diiblin, 211,
Fercall parish, . Ferns, Dean of, . Ferns diocese, . Ferns diocese, statistics, Ferns, revenue of dignities, Fiiidlater, Alexander, J.P., Fitzgerald, Bishop, . 337, Fitzgerald, Bishop, on the
Church, Fitzgerald, Lord Edward,
tomb, .... Flemyng, Rev. R., . Fleury/Rev. Dr., . Foley, Rev. Dr., . 395, Forth and Bargie, baronies, Foster, Bishop, . Foster, Leslie, on cause of
disturbances, Foundation schools, . Fowler, Bishop, Fowler, Rev. Luke, . Fuller, Bishop, .
Gallen parish, . Gal way Distress Committee, 372 General Assembly of Pres byterian Church, . 83, 106 Jebb, Bishop, Gibbings, Rev. Dr., . .239 Johnson, Bishop, Gill, Rev. T. E., . .371 Jones, Bishop, Gimlette, Rev. Thomas, . 329 Jordan, Rev. J., Glasnevin parish, . 222, 229 Gore, Bishop, . , .346 Kells town,
1 Hampton, Primate, . . 433
241
Harold’s-cross Church, 190, 214
288
Hastings, Rev. Mr., . .191
267
Healy, Rev. Robert, . . 242
310
Hervey, Bishop, . .469
271 Hewitt, Rev. James, . .214
108
Hickman, Bishop, . .469
354
Higgin, Bishop, . 347, 470
Hiiicks, Ven. Thomas, . 464
355
Hoadly, Primate, . .434
Hoaretown parish, . .282
171
Hort, Archbishop, . .365
184
Howth church, . . . 223
213
Hume, Rev. Dr., . .396
484
267
Inge, Archbishop, . .36
336
Ireland, case of, . .2
Ireland, transition state of
590
society, ... 3
149
Irish Church Missions
353
Society, . . 399, 402
283
Irish Church Missions So
346
ciety, letter on, by Arch
bishop Whately, . .407
242
Irwin, Archdeacon, . .213
372
Irwin, Rev. Thomas G., .253
346 340 352 184
112
INDEX.
619
Kells union, Kelly, Rev. Dr.,
Page
242, 251 . 534
Kerry R. C. diocese, . 301
Kil berry and Donaghpatrick
union, . . . .237 Kilcavan parish, . .281 Kildare, Bishop of, . .221 Kildare Cathedral, . .222 Kildare dioce.se, . .222 Kilfeiiora diocese, . .351 Kilfeiiora, statistics, . .358 Kilkenny Cathedral, . .296 Kilkenny city, . . .298 Kilkenny R. C. college, .311 Kilkenny, Statute of, . 12 Killaloe, Bishop of, . 337, 352 Killaloe diocese, . .350 Killaloe diocese, statistics, . 358 Killaloe R. C. diocese, . 361 Killarney R C. Cathedral, 361 Killarney town, . .362 Kilmacduagh diocese, . 351 Kilmacduagh and Kilfeiiora
R. C. diocese, . .428 Kilmore, Archdeacon, . 227 Kilmore diocese, . 481, 482 Kilmore See, . . .475 Kilmorey, Earl of, . .466 Kiltennel parish, . .286 Kingston, Rev. Thomas, 214, 469 King, Archbishop, . 171, 469 Kingston, Rev. Thomas, . 191 Kirk, Rev. Mr.,
Knox, Bishop, Kyle, Bishop,
302 347, 353,
461.
Irish
Land belonging to
Sees, ....
Land laws,
Landed proprietors, number of, ....
Landlords and Tenants,
Landlords in Ulster, e
Laud, Archbishop,
Lander, Dean, .
Leahy, Bishop, .
Leases, ,
470 337
141
593
525 581 613 63 290 467 600
Pago
Lee, Archdeacon, 161, 166, 185 Lee, Rev. Arthur T., on Irish episcopal succes sion, . . .45, 474 Leeper, Rev. Dr., . . 185 Le Fanu, Rev. William J. H. 197 Leighlin cathedral, . .287 Lcighlin, diocese, statistics, 279 Leighlin, revenue of dig nities, . .271 Leslie, Bishop, . . 346, 460 Leslie, Dr. John, . . 448 Lewis, Rev. S. II., . . 395 Lewis, Sir George C., 011
Irish disturbances, . 588
Liberties of Dublin, . .188 Limerick diocese, . . 345 Limerick diocese, statistics, 350 Limerick R. C. diocese, . 360 Lindsay, Bishop, . 352, 353 Lisburn cathedral, . .462 Lisburn town, . . .462 Lisniore castle, . . .317 Lismore, Dean of, . . 319 Lismore diocese, . 316, 325 Liturgy in English, first read in Christ Church, 1551, .... 38 Livings, value of, . .157 Lockwood, Dean, . .38 Loftus, Archbishop, . .37 Loftus, Bishop, 353, 433, 454 Lyon, Bishop, . . .334 Lyons, Rev. Thomas A. . 442 Lyster, Rev. William, . 242
Macartney, Rev. Hussey Burgh, on the Irish Church, . . . 97 M’Ghee, Rev. Robert, .214 MacHale, Archbishop, . 425 M’lvor, Rev. Dr., . . 472 Magee College, London derry, . . . .108 Magee, Rev. Dr., . . 194 Maguire, Father, . . 386 Maintenance of Church Establishment, . .511
620
INDEX.
Mann, Bishop, . .
Mant, Bishop, . . 353, Marsh, Bishop, . .
Martin, Archdeacon, .
Mather, Dr. Samuel, .
Mathias, Rev. B. W., 208, Matthews, Archdeacon, . Maturin, Rev. Wm., 187, Maxwell, Archbishop, . Maxwell, Bishop, . . Mayo county, . . . Meatk, Archdeacon, . . Meath, Bishop of, 231, 244, Meath diocese, 111, 231, Meath diocese, statistics, 236 Meath, Earl of, Liberty,
Dublin, . . . Merrion Hall Church,
Dublin, . . . Methodist Church, . . Middle ages, religion in, . Middlemen, . . . Miller, Rev. Dr., . . Missions to Roman Catho
lics, .... Moate parish, . . . Molyneux Asylum, . . Molyneux Asylum chapel, Molyneaux’s Case of Ireland
stated, . . . . Monahaii, Rev. Dr., 199, Monasteries, suppression of, Monastic institutions, . Money left by prelates of
the Established Church, Montgomery, Bishop, . Montgomery, Rev. Dr., . Morpeth, Lord, . .
Moriarty, Rev. Mr., 361, Morning Herald, . . Moyne, Bishop, . . Murdock, Rev. Mr. . .
Naas, Lord, Land Bill, .
Nangle, Rev. Edward, .
National Association, .
National Education, . .
Native Irish, Church of, .
Page
336 461 346
438 179 380 464 202 365 245 377 252 246 235 ,255
188
188 105 115 600 462
394 242 213 177
17
200 84 31
96 468 103
578 395 387 475 281
609 391
495 148
20
Page
Navaii parish, . . .542 Navan R. C. Church, sta tistics, . . . .543 Navan union, . . .253 Neglect of the clergy, .503 Neligan, Rev. Maurice, . 213 Nevins, Rev. Mr., . .192 Newcome, Primate, . .434 Newland, Rev. Dr., . .288 Newry and Mourne, exempt
jurisdiction, . . .466 New Ross union, . .282 Nonconformist congregations
in Dublin, . . .104 Norbury, Lord, . .577
Normanby, Lord, . .578 Nugent, Rev. Garret, . 240
O’Beirne, Dr., . . . 246 O’Brien, Right Rev. Dr., . 257 O’Connell, Daniel, 119, 129, 384 O’Connell on Church pro perty, . . . .156 O’Domiell, Bishop, . .364 Oraiigeism, . . .497 Ossory, Bishop of, . .257 Ossory diocese, . ‘ .283
Ossory, revenue of dignities, 271 O’Sullivan, Rev. Mortimer,
011 crime, &c., . .597 Otway, Rev. Caesar, . .210 O’Toole, Archbishop, . 33
Oxmantown, Lord, 011 com bination, . . .592
Parish churches in Dublin,
remarks on, . . .186 Parishes in Dublin, extent
and population, , .173
Parliament in Dublin ,1449, 34
Parliamentary grants for
Irish Church since the
Union, . . . .96
Parochial system, . .506
Parry, Bishop, . . .352
Paynswick, Dean, . .36
Peacocke, Rev. G., . .329
Peel, Sir Robert, . .120
INDEX.
621
Page
Pemiefather, Kev. William, 284 Peiy, Bishop, . . .346 Petty, Sir William, . .508 Plantation of Ulster, . 56
Plunket, Bishop, . . 365 Plunket, Hon. & Rev. W. C.,
165, 393
Plunket, Rev. Mr., . .103 Pluralities, . . .226 Political equality, . .19 Pollock, Rev. Alexander, .211 Ponsoiiby, Bishop, . 354, 470 Porter, Bishop, . .454
Prendergast, J. P., oiiCrom-
wellian settlement, . 585
Presbyterian Church, Rut land-square, Dublin, . 108 Presbyterian ministry, . 55 Presbyterians in Dublin, . 108 Price, Rev. Mr., . .179 Priesthood, persecution of, . 91 Priests, income of, . .123 Prohibitory Acts, . .582 Proselytism, . . .421 Protestants, persecution of, 70
80,
Radcliife, Rev. Mr., .
Raleigh, Sir Walter, .
Raphoe diocese, statistics,
Raphoe free school, .
Rathdrum Church,
Rathfarnham Church,
Redesdale, Lord,
Reform in the Church.
Reformation, new,
Regiuin Donum,
Reichel, Rev. Dr., .
Reid, Dr., 011 the Presby terian Church,
Relative proportions of in crease in Established and Roman Catholic Church,
Remediesand reconciliation,
Remonstrance of the Irish chiefs, ....
Rental of Ireland,
Reynagh parish,
Ribbonism,
301 321 471 472 223 229 577 501 388 106 239
60
508 491
10 148 249 594
Page
Richardson, Dr., . .477 Rider, Bishop, . . .352 Ritualism, . . .313 Roane, Bishop, . . .352 Robinson, Primate, . .434 Roden, Lord, . . . 441 Rogers, Rev. John, . .107 Roman Catholic Church,
progress of in Dublin, . 94 Roman Catholic Churches,
increase of, . . .312 Roman Catholic revival, . 303 Roman Catholics, their faith, 8 Romanism in Connaught,
374, 393
Ross, diocese, . . . 333 Russell, Lord John, on the
Church temporalities, . 152 Ryder, Archdeacon, . .137 Ryder, Bishop, . . .352 Ryder, Rev. Roderick, .410
St. Andrew’s, Dublin, . 192 St. Anne’s, Dublin, . 186, 194 St. Audoeii’s, Dublin, . 185
St. Bartholomew’s Church,
Dublin,. . . . 208 St. Bride’s Church, Dublin, 183 St. Canice Cathedra], 293, 312 St. Catherine’s parish. Dub lin, . . ‘. 173, 189 St. Doulough’s Church, .192 St. George’s parish, Dublin, 204 St. James’s parish, Dublin,
173, 191 St. John’s parish, Dublin,
172, 185
St. John’s, Sandymount, . 220 St. Jude’s Church, Dublin, . 191 St. Lawrence, Bishop, . 337 St. Mark’s parish, Dublin, 196 St. Mary’s Chapel of Ease,
Dublin, . . .201
St. Mary’s parish, Dublin, . 200 St. Mary’s school-house, . 201 St. Mathew, Royal Chapel,
Ringsend, . . .219 St. Mathias, Free Church, .211
622
INDEX.
St. Michael’s parish, Dublin, 1 72 St. Michan’s parish, Dublin, 198 St. Mogue monument, . 276 St. Nicholas Within, parish,
Dublin, . . .179
St. Nicholas Within, re marks on, . . .181 St. Nicholas Without and
St. Luke’s parish, Dublin, 183 St. Olave’s parish, Water- ford, .... 324 St. Patrick, . . .431 St. Patrick’s Cathedral, . 1G2 St. Patrick’s Cathedral, re marks on, . . .107 St. Patrick’s, Waterford, . 324 St. Peter’s parish, Dublin,
174, 175
St. Peter’s Church, Dublin, 186 St. Stephen’s Church, Dub lin, . . . .187 St. Thomas’s parish, Dublin, 203 St. Werburgh’s parish, Dub lin, .... 171 Saints, Irish, . . .27 Saiitles, Bishop, . . 354
Sandford Church, . .213 Scott, Rev. J. G., . .161 Seymour, Rev. M. H., . 390 Shankhill parish, Belfast, . 462 Shaw, Recorder, . .578 Shee, Sergeant, . . .603 Sheridan, Rev. Denis, . 479 Sibthorpe, Bishop, . .346 Singer, Bishop, . . .248 Sirr, Rev. Dr., . . . 392 Slane Abbey, . . .111 Smith, Rev. Mr., . .187 Spenser, on the state of Ire land, .... 88 Stanford, Rev. Dr., . 199, 203 Stauntoii, Mr. Michael, ac tion against, . . .386 Stavely, Rev. Robert, . 249 Stearne’s, Bishop, charities, 453 Stone, Primate, . .434
Stopford, Archdeacon, 242, 253 Stopford, Bishop, . 336, 340
Page
Stopford, Rev. T. A., . 252 Stuart, Primate, . . 434 Stuart, Rev. Dr., . . 205 Swayne, Rev. John, . .329 Swift’s-alley Church, Dub lin, . . . .190 Swiiiey, Dr., . . .478 Synge, Archbishop, . .365 Synge, Bishop, . . 346, 353
Taney Church, . . .230 Taylor, Bishop Jeremy, . 461 Templetuohy parish, . 487
Tenant right, . 601., 602, 610 Thomas, Rev. G. X, . . 473 Thomburqh, Bishop, . . 345 Tisdall, Rev. Dr., . . 192 .Tithe question, settlement
of, .... 152
(Tithe system, . 134,135, 139,
369, 507
Todd, Bishop, . . . 4GO Todd, Rev. Dr., . .166 Todd, Rev. Dr., Life of St.
Patrick, ... 20 Toleration Act, . .102
Tomlinson, Rev. Thomas, . 202 Tonsoii, Bishop, . .354 Toppin,’ Rev. Richard, . 329 Trench, Archbishop, . 365, 374 Trench, Right Hon. Richard
Cheiievix, . . .160 Trinity College endowment, 97 Tuam, Dean of, . . .417 Tuam, Killala, and Aehonry
diecese, . . .363
Tuam diocese, statistics, . 421 Tuam R, C. diocese, . .426 Tyranny of land agents, . 599
Ulster province, . . 7
Unitarian bodies, . .106
Urwick, Rev. Dr., . . 380
Ussher, Archbishop, 171,433
Verschoyle, Bishop, 215,289,481 Yesey, Bishop, . . .352 Vignoles, Rev. Charles, . 291
I’s account of Iro.
INDEX.
Page
r- on landlords and tenants, Walsh, Rev. Mr Walsh, Bishop, “ ‘ Walsh, Rev, ^. Pakenha^ WarhiiT*f.r»T, 13;^ ‘
^j -Disnop, . 34] 3^/j
_— -^u. Cathedral, Q9q
Waterford diocese, . 33]’ 395 Waterford diocese, statistics 328 ^eftherhead, Bishop, 3^
Webb, Bishop, . ‘t[n
Webster Rev. Dr., 354,400, 403 Wesey, Mr. Charles, ‘ ‘105 Wesleyan ministers, ‘ jQa
West Connaught Church Endowment Society, 166
Wexford county,
Wexford town,”.
Wexford union,
Whately,
, Lord Chi
TTT- JJ-”»P«ai.
Wmdle, Rev. Mr
filter, Dr. Samuel, ‘ Witter, Bishop,
Wobely.Arciiioaeo,,; Woodward, Bishoii ‘ Woodward, Rev. F. .’
shop,
Youghal Church Youghal town, Young, Arthur,
Church, Rat]
623
age
, 001 . 409
25G . 216 . 179 . 352 193 341 187 51 352
320 320
589
THE END.