ley, archbishop, 1219. private aggrandizement, when Dean of St. Patrick's, of the property of the deanery". He was succeeded Lancelot Bulkein the archbishoprick by Lancelot Bulkeley, a native of Beaumaris, in Anglesey; but educated at Brazennose College, Oxford, and a doctor of divinity of the University of Dublin. Popish riot, 1629. About the time with which we are now engaged, His danger in a this prelate incurred considerable personal danger from an insurrectionary riot of the jesuits and friars. Having been informed of their continued practice to infuse sedition by their sermons into the Popish inhabitants of the city, the archbishop applied to the lords justices for a warrant and a file of musketeers to seize the offenders. The Carmelites, in Cork Street, together with their assembly, rose in a body to oppose the execution of the warrant. They fell upon the guard, and affronted the archbishop and the mayor, who assisted with his attendants. The archbishop was obliged to cry out for help, and take to flight, and with difficulty saved himself by seeking shelter in a neighbouring house 15. government in This riot was committed about Christmas, 1629. Measures of the In the following month, the lords justices reported consequence. it to the king and privy council of England, and before the end of the month received the following recognition: "By your letter we understand, how the seditious riot, moved by the friars and their adherents at Dublin, hath by your good order and resolution been happily suppressed: and we doubt not, but by this occasion you will consider, how much it concerneth the good government of that kingdom, to prevent in time the first growing of such evils." In pursuance of this were added directions from his majesty: Proceedings against the Papists. 1629. St. Patrick's Purgatory exposed. Restless spirit of the Popish clergy. "That the house, where so many friars appeared in their habits, and wherein the reverend archbishop and the mayor of Dublin received the first publick affront, be speedily demolished, and be a mark of terror to the registers of authority and that the rest of the houses, erected or employed there or elsewhere in Ireland to the use of superstitious societies, be converted to houses of correction, and to set idle people on work, or to other publick uses, for the advancement of justice, good art, or trade." The lords justices at this time were Adam Loftus, Viscount Ely, lord chancellor, and Richard, earl of Cork, lord treasurer; having been appointed on the recall of the Lord Deputy, Viscount Falkland, in October of this year. Immediately on coming into office, they had directed that the Papists should be prosecuted for not coming to church: and accordingly the statute of the second of Queen Elizabeth was given in charge at the assizes, but by instructions from England such prosecutions were superseded. Nevertheless, the lords justices, being exceedingly zealous against Popery, caused St. Patrick's Purgatory, in a small island of Lough Dergh, in the county of Donegall, to be digged up; and thereby laid open to the world that notorious imposition, to the great loss and disgrace of the Popish clergy, who had derived a high reputation and vast emoluments from that fraudulent and shameful superstition". But notwithstanding this exposure and loss, and although the Popish clergy in general were so depraved and ignorant, that the severest censure ever pronounced upon the clergy of the Church of Ireland, was muttered by an Irishman, who said, "That the king's priests were as bad as the Pope's 16 Cox, ii. 53, 54. for their repres priests;" yet did their restless spirit of tumult and outrage rise again at this time to such a height, that a priest, being seized for some unlawful practices in Dublin, was forcibly rescued by the populace. Thus Steps necessary the lords justices were compelled by their insolence sion. to take steps for their repression: and, by direction of the council of England, they seized upon fifteen of the religious houses, lately erected by the Papists in Dublin, for the king's use; and, in 1632, their principal house in Back Lane was disposed of to the University of Dublin, who placed therein a rector and scholars, and maintained there a weekly lecture, which the lords justices often countenanced by their presence. But afterwards, in the time of the next Lord Deputy, the building was allowed to return to its former use, and again became a mass-house. SECTION II. William Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore. State of his Diocese. life. It was about this period that another distinguished Bedell's early ornament was added to the episcopate of the Church of Ireland, in the person of William Bedell, a native of Essex, and in 1593 a fellow of Emanuel College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.D. in 1599, with the reputation of singular knowledge in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages; subsequently the chaplain and honoured companion of Sir Henry Wotton, King James's ambassador at Venice; and the bosom friend and most intimate intercom Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Bishop of 1629, Disadvantages of his bishoprick. municant of learning, of Father Paul Sarpi, the illustrious historian of the Council of Trent. From a retired and obscure benefice in the diocese of Norwich, whither he had withdrawn on his return from Italy, by an unanimous election of the fellows, he was called to the provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, which, after some difficulty, he was persuaded to accept by the king's positive commands: and he applied himself to the government of the college with a vigour of mind peculiar to him; composing differences among the fellows, rectifying disorders, and improving discipline; and training the youth in religious knowledge by weekly lectures on the Church Catechism, with such a mixture of matters speculative and practical, that his discourses were regarded both as learned lectures of divinity, and excellent exhortations to piety and virtue'. He continued in this employment about two years; when, on the recommendation of Laud, at that time Bishop of London, he was, in the fiftyninth year of his age, advanced to the united see of Kilmore and Ardagh: the king, in the letters for his promotion, making honourable mention of the services he had done, and the reformation he had wrought in the university. There has been former occasion for remarking that the bishoprick of Kilmore had, from different causes, been subject to peculiar disadvantages. It had indeed been possessed by two successive bishops of King James's appointment since 1603; and that king, by a commission in the seventeenth year of his reign, had ordered that all lands in the county of Cavan, or within the new plantation of Longford 1 WARE'S Bishops, p. 232. and Leitrim, which should be found by inquisition to have formerly belonged to the sees of Kilmore and Ardagh, should be restored to them. But, notwithstanding these means of improvement, little or no benefit had accrued from them for the publick good, however instrumental they may have been made to the emolument of Bishop Bedell's prede cessors. "He found his diocese," says Bishop Burnet, in Bishop Burnet's his very copious life of him, "under so many dis- account of it. orders, that there was scarce a sound part remaining. The revenue was wasted by excessive dilapidations, and all sacred things had been exposed to sale in so sordid a manner, that it was grown to a proverb; and there was scarce enough remaining of both these revenues to support a bishop, who was resolved not to supply himself by indirect and base methods"." letter to Bishop But the general state of his diocese will be best Bishop Bedell's represented by transcribing a letter, which he ad- Laud. dressed to Bishop Laud a few months after his April 1, 1630. promotion. "Right reverend Father, my honourable good Lord, Since my coming to this place, which was a little before Michaelmas, (till which time the settling of the state of the college, and my Lord Primate's visitation, deferred my consecration,) I have not been unmindful of your lordship's commands, to advertise you, as my experience should inform me, of the state of the Church; which I shall now the better do, because I have been about my dioceses, and can set down, out of my knowledge and view, what I shall relate; and shortly to speak much ill matter in a few words, it is very miserable. Miserable state of the diocese. "The cathedral church of Ardagh, one of the most Dilapidated ancient in Ireland, and said to be built by St. Patrick, 2 BISHOP BURNET's Life of Bishop Bedell, pp. 34-36. churches. |