which, though but in his nineteenth year, he had confessedly the victory. (Ware's Bishops, vol. i. p. 99.)-This may be termed, in these days of liberality, an idle controversy; but the happy result of it and similar efforts, on the part of the Protestant Clergy of Dublin, between the years 1535 and. 1644, was the conversion of considerably more than half of the inhabitants of this metropolis from the fatal errors of the Popish Religion.

Feb. 24.-Sir Thomas Norris, Lord President of Munster, having been killed by the Rebels, Sir George Carew was appointed his successor, and landed at the Head of Howth. (Stafford's, or rather Sir George Carew's Hibernia Pacata.)

March 26.-Lord Barry received a letter from the Earl of Tyrone, of which the following is an extract :—

"My LonD BARRY,

"Your impiety to God, cruelty to your own soul and body, tyranny and ingratitude, both to your followers and country, are inexcusable and intolerable; you separated yourself from the union of Christ's mystical body, the Catholicke Church, and you are the cause why all the nobilitie of the South (you being linked unto each of them from the East to the West, either in affinitie or consanguinitie) are not linked together to shake off the cruell yoake of Heresie and Tyrannie with which our soules and bodies are opprest, &c. &c.

"From the Campe, this instant, Tuesday the sixth of March, 1599.

"O'NEALE."

Lord Barry answered, that he held by his lordships, and lands under Queen Elizabeth and her Royal Progenitors; that he would therefore be faithful to her Majesty's crown and dignity, and advised O'Neale to follow his example.

In the month of February, this year, Sir Warham St. Leger, one of the Commissioners for the Government of Munster, rode out of the city of Cork, accompanied by a small body of horse, to take the air. Not suspecting danger, he strayed a short way from his company, when he was surprised by Maguire, of Fermanagh, and some horsemen, at a narrow pass, about a mile and an half from Cork. Maguire struck the first blow, and mortally wounded Sir Warham, but was himself killed on the spot, by a shot from the pistol of his antagonist.

March 30.-The Earl of Tyrone, James Fitzthomas, Florence Mac Carty, and Mac Donough, wrote a joint letter to the Pope, praying for assistance from his Holiness against the heretical English.

April 10.-The Earl of Ormond, Lieutenant-General of her Majesty's forces, was taken prisoner by the Rebel, Rory O'More, within eight miles of Kilkenny. The Earl, in a parley with O'More, in the presence of the Lord President, the Earl of Thomond, and Lord Audley, guarded by seven. hundred foot, and one hundred horse, called for Archer, a celebrated Jesuit, who took an active part in this Rebellion, and, whilst he was sharply reproving him for his treasonable practices, under the pretence of religion, he was surrounded by pikemen, who had concealed themselves in an adjoining wood, and taken prisoner. The Lord President and the rest of the party escaped with difficulty, and the Earl of Thomond received a wound by a pike. This circumstance gave great encouragement to the Rebels, at that time much superior in number to the Queen's forces, who were shut up in cities and walled towns, in a condition little different from being besieged. Stafford tells us, that the inhabitants of these places were "so besotted and bewitched by the Popish Priests, Jesuits, and Seminaries, that for fear of their cursing and excommunications, they were ready, upon every occasion, to rise in arms against the English forces, and minister all underhand aid and succour to the Rebels."

April 28.-Pope Clement VIII. (before he could have received Tyrone's petition for aid,) sent an indulgence to the Irish Rebels, animating them to persevere in their war, "adversus Anglos Ecclesiæ et fidei desertores."

NOTE. From this, to the end of the 12th Annal, the authorities are taken from Stafford's or Carew's Hibernia Pacata, except in a few places, which are marked.

No. VIII.

"Si Dominus, &c."-" If a temporal Lord take no care to purge his country from Heresy, let him be excommunicated by the Metropolitan; and if he satisfy not within a year, let the Pope be informed of it, that he may presently declare his vassals absolved from their obedience, and that he expose his land to be invaded by Catholics."

(Innocent III. and the Council of Lateran.)

1600, June 7. Rory O'More consented to release the Earl of Ormond for three thousand pounds.

:

July 9.-The castle of the Knight of Glyn, in the county of Limerick, was stormed and taken by Sir George Carew and

the Earl of Thomond, after an obstinate defence. This was a place of considerable force; and from the beginning of this Rebellion, one Anthony Arthur, a Popish merchant of Limerick, lay in it, as a general factor for the city, to vend commodities to the Rebels.

July 23.-Sir George Carew marched with his army from Limerick to Kilrush, in Thomond, where he embarked his forces for Kerry, and arrived before the strong castle of Carrigafoyle on the 29th of the same month.

The Earl of Thomond provided boats and such other necessaries as his country afforded. It is worth observing here, that, a century afterwards, a strong Protestant colony was settled in the neighbourhood of Kilrush, which, from that day to this, has checked and held in awe the disaffected Papists of Clare; and that, in the memorable year 1798, the Kilrush Cavalry, under the authority of a warrant from the Privy Council, pursued one of the present Popish agitators from one end of the county to the other, and he escaped by concealing himself under a leathern boat, called a coragh or nivoge.

August 23.-William Fitzgerald, the Knight of Kerry, refuses to entertain the sugan Earl of Desmond, and is taken into protection by Sir Charles Wilmot. Desmond, in revenge, destroyed the houses in the town of Dingle.

August 31.-Maurice Stack, a brave undertaker in Kerry, and a successful officer in her Majesty's service, was invited to dine with Honor O'Brien, wife of Lord Lixnaw, and sister of the Earl of Thomond. After dinner, the lady desired to speak with Stack privately in her chamber, where she called out to some persons who were in the house, that he had affronted her, on which they rushed in with their skeins, and assassinated him. The Earl of Thomond was so grieved and incensed at this inhuman act, that he never suffered his sister to come in his sight afterwards, though some of the lady's friends endeavoured to excuse her. The next day, her husband, Lord Lixnaw, hanged Thomas Eneally Stack, the brother of the said Maurice, whom he had kept prisoner for a long time before.

Owan Mac Eagan, the Pope's Vicar Apostolic, felt himself impowered to give absolution to such assassins as Lord Lixnaw and his followers, by the Canon of Pope Urban-" Non eos arbitravit homicidas, quibus adversus excommunicatos zelo Catholicæ matris Ecclesiæ ardentibus, aliquos corum truci dasse contigisset."

← These are men of blood," said Luther, (Com. II. 40. 10.) " and if I were at present a member of their coinmunion,

their savage barbarity would induce me to leave them for ever, even though I had no other fault to find with them."

Queen

October 14.-The young Earl of Desmond, (son of the late attainted Earl,) lands at Youghal from England, Elizabeth, having had him a prisoner from his infancy, sent him now into Ireland, with many marks of favour, hoping that his presence in his own country would draw the ancient followers of his father from the Rebel, James Fitzthomas, who had assumed the title of Desmond, and was nick-named the sugan Earl, from his custom of wearing a hay rope round his body, after the manner of the Irish kernes or tories.

Soon after the arrival of the young Earl of Desmond in Ireland, he took a journey into the county of Limerick, accompanied by the Archbishop of Cashel, and Mr. Boyle, Clerk of the Council. They arrived in Kilmallock upon a Saturday, early in the evening, and by the way, and at their entry into the town, there was a great concourse of people, so that all the streets, doors, and windows, and the very tops of the houses, were filled with them. They welcomed the young Earl as one whom God had sent to be that comfort and delight which their hearts and souls most desired: no expressions or signs of joy were wanting upon the occasion; and, according to an ancient custom in Munster, they threw wheat and salt upon him, as a prediction of future peace and plenty. All was well, till the Earl, to the utter astonishment of the multitude, proceeded with his suite to hear divine service in church next day. On the way the crowds used loud and rude dehortations to keep him from church, which he disregarded; and after the service was over, they railed and spitted at him as he came out of the church; and the multitude, that had crowded into Kilmallock to see him, dispersed in sulky silence.

Such was the powerful influence of the Popish Clergy, that, in the space of a few hours, they converted the affectionate vassals of this Noble Earl into his bitterest and most malicious enemies.

November 5.-Lord Lixnaw's Castle, of Listowel was taken by Sir Charles Wilmot. Lixnaw's eldest son, a child of five years old, was in the Castle when it was taken, but one Sir Dermot Mac Brodie, a Popish Priest, stripped the child of his clothes, and, besmearing his face with dust and dirt, sent him off naked by an old woman, who conveyed him away without suspicion. Sir Charles, hearing of the escape of the child, threatened to hang the Priest, and compelled him to go, with a Captain and a strong guard, to a wood six miles from the

*

Castle, which, by reason of thick briers and thorns, was almost impassable, and there he discovered to the guard, the old woman and the child, who, with all Lord Lixnaw's moveable effects and military stores, were concealed in a deep and exten→

sive cave.

1601, January 13.-The Spanish Archbishop of Dublin, then lurking in the County of Donegal, wrote to the sugan Earl of Desmond, "intreating him and all his party to be of good courage, and to fight constantly and valiantly for the faith and liberty of their country, in certain expectation of most powerful aid arriving to them in a short time, from his Catholic Majesty the King of Spain." On the same day the Lord President of Munster wrote to the Lords of the Council in England, that the Spaniards would undoubtedly invade Ireland; for testimony whereof, he sent to their Lordships many letters, which he had received from Spain; and he added, that many Romish Priests and Friars, (always the forerunners of mischief in this country,) had lately come into Ireland, for no other purpose than to withdraw the hearts of her Majesty's subjects from their allegiance to her, their true and lawful Sovereign.

March 30.-From this day to the 13th of April, the Rebels of Munster were reduced to the necessity of living on horseflesh, and were in a state of starvation, so that were it not for assistance they received from Ulster, the province would have been reduced before the Spaniards arrived to their assistance.

In the year 1569, they had been reduced to such distress, for want of provisions, that Spencer gives the following description of their sufferings; an awful warning to the people of Ireland, of one of the evils likely to accrue from their. suffering the incendiaries of the present day to lead them into Rebellion:

"Notwithstanding Munster, (View of Ireland, p. 72.) was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that one would have thought the Rebels should have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half, they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glyns they came creeping forth upon their hands and feet, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat the dead carrions-happy were they that could find them-yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a