Letter from Sir hall, September Alarm at the publication of the Canons. maintain that which God hath thus mercifully bestowed upon you. "Your Grace's very loving Friend and Brother, "Lambeth, May 10, 1635." "W. CANT. But if these proceedings were an occasion of thankfulness and congratulation to the Church and her friends, they produced different sentiments in her enemies. This appeared on their publication in the ensuing autumn. For in a letter from Sir George Radcliffe, principal secretary to the Lord Deputy, Dublin Castle, September 22, 1635, he observes to the Bishop of Derry, "The Canons are published in print this week and by occasion of speaking thereof, here is a panick fear risen in this town, as if a new persecution, so they call it, were instantly to be set on foot. Here is also much talk of a book, newly come over, out of England, printed at Cambridge. The author, a country minister, styles himself priest and of five treatises which the book contains, one is, that charity is to be preferred before faith, hope, or knowledge: another, that Antichrist is yet to come and a third, that the law of God, as it is qualified in the Gospel, may be performed in this life. This startles a Puritan as much as the Canons do a Papist "." 11 Rawdon Papers, p. 23. SECTION VI. Measures for improving the Temporalties of the Church. Bishop Bramhall's valuable services. Petition from the Clergy in Convocation, 1636. Improvements relative to the Clergy and Church Service. Repair of Cathedrals. Final sentence of deposition by Bishop Echlin on the Nonconforming Ministers. Henry Leslie, bishop of Down and Connor. Five of the Clergy of that Diocese refuse to subscribe to the Canons. The Bishop's solicitude to retain them in the Church. His Visitation Sermon, 1636. His conference with the Dissentients, and sentence upon them. His exemplary conduct. proving the tem Church. IN pursuance of the Acts of Parliament, recounted Measures for imin the last section, and with the support of the Lord poralties of the Deputy, means were promptly taken for improving the temporalties of the Church. The Bishop of Derry was employed for this useful purpose: and Sir James Ware, or rather Mr. Harris, bears the following honourable testimony to the zeal and efficacy with which he executed his undertaking. services. "The foundations being laid, the bishop immediately Bishop Bramapplied himself to the building, which he carried up with hall's valuable incredible expedition. The fee-farms and impropriations stuck like ivy to the old walls, and it was hard to separate them. In all the numerous controversies arising from thence, he was the moderator to state the rents, and compromise the whole differences; generally by consent of parties, sometimes by order from the council-table, which then determined many matters, especially where forms and niceties had rendered the laws incompetent for that end. "But, to carry on the work with effect, he recommended able and prudent persons to the Lord Deputy for the higher preferments of the Church. Dean Sing was made Bishop of Cloyne, of which he soon gave a good account, and raised every mark of the revenue to an hundred Fit persons recommended for high prefer ments. Improvement of the primacy. Letter from Bramhall. pounds; and Dean Lesly was made Bishop of Down and Connor both prelates of parts and learning." : To these specifick instances of Bishop Bramhall's profitable exertions, Sir JAMES WARE'S History adds the following, in correspondence with his Life by Bishop VESEY. "It would be an endless labour to be particular in all the services he did the Church. I shall mention only one instance of what he did in this sort, in relation to the primacy, as it appears in a letter from Archbishop Ussher to him, dated the 25th of February, 1635, not a year after the statute had passed. I find,' says he, 'by the catalogue of Ussher to Bishop compositions, that the augmentation of the rents of this see amounteth to 735l. 4s. 4d. per annum, and that you have now passed the greater part of your journey. Not only myself, but all my successors, will have cause to honour the memory of the Lord Deputy, and yours, whom God hath used as an instrument to bring this work to such perfection. If," observes the biographer, "so great an improvement was made in this one see, by the surrendering of fee-farms, and compositions for the rents, and that this was only the half of his journey, what may we judge was done by him through the kingdom1?" Benefits procured for the inferior clergy. Forwarded by the King. By the Lord But they were not the episcopal revenues only, which were improved by Bishop Bramhall. "He was not less industrious or successful," continues the same writer, "in behalf of the inferior clergy, whose case he often lamented, and often singly sustained. He obtained for them some few impropriations, by power of reason and persuasion; more by the law; but most of all by purchase. The king's example was of great influenco upon the occasion. He had by his letter restored all impropriate tythes, as fast as the leases should expire. The Lord Deputy, in pursuance thereof, restored several livings kept by his predecessors for their provisions, reserving something to be annually paid out of them for that end; and this noble precedent had its influence on some of the 1 WARE'S Bishops, p. 120. VESEY's Life of Bramhall. nobility and gentry. He persuaded some into a full restitution, and others into a competent endowment of the vicarage, or at least an allocation of a decent salary for the curate. Where neither reason, religion, nor law could prevail, he dealt in the way of purchase; and, to raise a sufficient fund for this purpose, he employed his own income very liberally. By the Arch bishop of Can terbury. dients used by Bishop Bram hall. "The Archbishop of Canterbury countenanced the work, and lent him both his hand, head, and purse, having designed 40,000l. for it. His majesty gave some money for pious uses, which his grace procured to be committed to our bishop's management. He borrowed great sums of Various expeseveral rich men, and secured them repayment out of the issues of the impropriations which he bought; putting them into the hands of such creditors, for a certain number of years, upon the expiration of which they were to revert to the Church. He also got money by voluntary subscriptions; and he so ordered matters, on the surrendry of fee-farms, that the surplus rents, which he gained for several bishops, should be for some years in this way employed. From such of the clergy as were rich, he had great assistance by procuring loans, which he was very just in repaying. By these and other prudent methods, he regained to the Church, in the compass of four years, 30,000l., some say 40,000l., per annum, whereof he gave an account to the Archbishop of Canterbury at his going into England. Many poor vicars now eat of the tree which the Bishop of Derry planted; and many have their grounds refreshed by his care and labour, who know not the source of the river that makes them fruitful"." "With so much care and assiduous labour," says Bishop Jeremy Taylor in his Funeral Sermon, "did the Bishop of Derry endeavour to restore the Church of Ireland to that splendour and fulness, which, as it is much conducing to the honour of God and of religion, God himself being the judge, so it is much more necessary for you, than it is for us. And so this wise prelate rarely well understood it; and having the advantage and blessing of a gracious king, and a lieutenant, patron of religion and the Church, he 2 WARE'S Bishops, p. 120. Bishop Jeremy mony to Bishop Bramhall's exertions. Some of them intercepted. His services improved the deposita pietatis, as Origen calls them, the gages of piety, which the religion of the ancient princes and nobles of this kingdom had bountifully given, to such a comfortable competency, that, though there be place left for present and future piety to enlarge itself, yet no man hath reason to be discouraged in his duty. mon. "But the goods of this world are called waters by SoloStolen waters are sweet, and they are too unstable to be stopt some of these waters, in the recovery of which he had been greatly and principally instrumental, did run back from their proper channel, and return to another course than God and the laws intended. Yet his labours and pious counsels were not the less acceptable to God and good men and therefore, by a thankful and honourable acknowledged by recognition, the convocation of the Church of Ireland hath transmitted in record to posterity their deep resentment of his singular services and great abilities in this whole affair. And this honour will for ever remain to that Bishop of Derry he had a Zerubbabel, who repaired the temple, and restored its beauty; but he was the Joshua, the high priest, who under him ministered this blessing to the congregations of the Lord." the convocation. Petition from the clergy in convocation. Acceded to by In 1636, the clergy in convocation presented to the government a humble petition, that all Popish schoolmasters might be suppressed; that inquiry should be made by fit commissioners into the abuses of free-schools, and speedy orders given for their reformation; and that, whereas frequent burials in abbeys occasion the great contempt and neglect of parish-churches, and are mainly prejudicial to the clergy, some good course might be taken to restrain that abuse by Act of State. The Lord Deputy in consequence expressed his approbation of this petition, in a letter of June 2, 1636, to the Lord Primate and the rest of the commissioners for ecclesiastical causes; and required and authorized them to advise of some good means for preventing the |