of the

aforesaid, and their wicked and crafty English ministers have in every instance violated, entirely departing from the terms of the grant made to them, and studiously and intentionally exhibiting in their actions a line of conduct directly contrary to all those conditions which they had The bounds promised to fulfil. For the territories of the Church are so curtailed, narrowed, and mutilated by them, that some cathedral churches have been plundered of a moiety, and more than that, of their lands and property, while ecclesiastical privileges of every kind are for the most Ireland: its part entirely abolished by these individuals here spoken bishops lit of. And our bishops and prelates are indiscriminately tle respected by the Eng- summoned, arrested, seized upon, and imprisoned by the lish, &c. &c. ministers of the king of England in Ireland: and though

Church not extended but nar

rowed in

The Irish people de

praved, not improved, by Anglo-Norman inter

course.

suffering as they do such constant and serious injuries, they are yet so strongly influenced by a slavish timidity, that they never venture to bring before your holiness any representations concerning them. In consequence of such scandalous silence on their part, we also are disposed to refrain from any further observations on this topic.

"Then as regards the Irish people, whom in their agreement they had promised to instruct in good morals, and bring into subjection to laws, they are giving them such instructions that their naturally religious and dovelike innocence of character has, from intercourse with such neighbours, and from witnessing their profligate examples, been wonderfully changed into the cunning of the serpent. They have also deprived them of the written laws, according to which they had been governed for the most part in preceding times, and of every other law, excepting that with which they could not be forced to part; introducing meanwhile, with a view to the extermination of our people, infamous laws of the most abandoned and unprincipled character, some of which by way of example are here inserted; and those which we

in any

The oppres

sions of the settlers il

subjoin are inviolably observed in the court of the king of England in Ireland, viz:— "That permission is given to every person who is not Irish, to summon at the law, any Irish sort of action whatsoever. But every Irishman, whe- lustrated in ther he be clerk or layman, the prelates alone excepted, their legal is ipso facto excluded from commencing any action what- procedures.

soever.

person,

flicted on

men:

Further, as it very constantly happens, whenever No punishany Englishman by perfidy and craft kills an Irishman, ment inhowever noble or however innocent, be he clerk or lay- men of Engman, be he regular or secular, nay even if an Irish pre- lish blood late were to be slain, there is no penalty nor correction for murder. enforced in the said court against the person who may ing Irishbe guilty of such wicked murder; but rather, the more eminent the person killed, and the higher the rank which he holds among his own people, so much the more is the murderer honoured and rewarded by the English; and a system apnot merely by the people at large, but also by the reli- proved of by gious and bishops of the English race; and above all by and clergy those on whom devolves officially the duty of inflicting of the Engupon such malefactors a just award and suitable correc- lish race. tion for their evil deeds.

the bishops

"Furthermore, every Irishwoman, whether of noble Other inrank or otherwise, who marries any Englishman, is de- stances of Anglo-Norprived, on her partner's death, merely because she is man oppresan Irishwoman, of the third part of the landed property sion set and other effects which belonged to her deceased hus- forth. band.

66

Again these English, wherever they can compass the destruction of an Irishman by violent means, will not by any means allow such an Irishman to dispose of his own property by a last will or testamentary arrangement of any kind. But on the contrary they make their own of all his goods, depriving the Church of her just rights, and by their violence reducing on their own au

No mere Irish to be allowed into any reli

gious houses

under Anglican influ

ence.

The abominable perfidy of the Anglo-Norman barons, &c. in Ire

land exposed;

thority to a state of bondage, the blood which flowed in freedom from the days of old.

66

Moreover, by the common counsel of that king of England, and certain Anglican bishops, (the principal of whom was a person of small discretion, and of no knowledge, the Archbishop of Armagh,) an iniquitous statute has been lately enacted in the city of S. Keynice in Ireland, in the following unnatural terms: It is ordained, that all the religious who dwell in the land of peace among the English, are prohibited from receiving into their order or form of religion, any excepting such as are of the nation of the English. And if any shall do other. wise, our lord the king shall deal with them as with persons guilty of contempt for his commands; and the founders and patrons of such institutions shall proceed against them as disobedient and contumacious in resisting the present ordinance, promulgated by authority of the council of the whole land of Ireland under the government of the English.'

"And even before this statute had been enacted, as well as since that time, the Preaching Friars and the Minors, the Monks and Canons, and other Anglicans, were in the habit of observing the rule with sufficient strictness, being very great respecters of persons. And yet the monasteries for monks and canons from which in modern times the Irish are thus repulsed, were founded for the most part by themselves.

"Again, in a country where they had bound themselves to introduce virtues, and exterminate the nurseries of vices, there, by engrafting vices introduced by themselves, they have effected a radical extirpation of already existing virtues. For the English who inhabit our country, who style themselves of the middle nation, are so widely different in their principles of morality from the English of England, and from all other nations, that they may with the utmost propriety be denominated a nation, not of any

and illus

middling, but the most extreme degree of perfidy. For they have kept up ever since the days of old, this wicked and unprincipled usage, which is not even yet falling into disuse among them, but on the contrary gaining every day new strength and becoming more inveterate, viz., that when they invite to an entertainment some of the nobles of our nation, at the very time of repast, or during the hours devoted to rest, they will shed without mercy the blood of the unsuspecting guests whom they have invited, terminating in this way their abominable feasts. And after such odious conduct they have also cut off the heads of their victims, and sold them for money to their personal enemies; as did the baron Peter Bermingham, trated by (surnamed, only too justly, the traitor,) to his own kins- particular man Maurice de Santa Cruce and his brother Calvagh, examples. individuals of very high rank and very much respected Atrocities among us, after having invited them to a banquet on the of P. Berfestival of the most holy Trinity. On that very day mingham, when the repast was over, immediately on their rising from table, he fell on them with twenty-four persons of his gang, and inhumanly butchered them; and afterwards sold their heads to their enemies for a considera. ble sum of money. And when an indictment for the crime was brought against him before the king of England, (the father, that is, of him that is now king,) he inflicted no penalty whatsoever on this atrocious traitor.*

A. D. 1305.

Similar vil

"In like manner Lord Thomas de Clare, brother to lainies perthe Earl of Gloucester, having invited to his house that petrated by Lord Thos. illustrious individual, Brian Roe, prince of Thomond, his de Clare, own kinsman, and having also, in token of more inti- A.D. 1277; mate alliance and friendship, shared with him in par- (Vid 4 M.)

• See the truth of this charge, of traitorous perfidy, &c. against the Normans, corroborated by a similar one from the Welsh Annals of Caradoc, A.D. 1103, Art. XXXIII., pp. 1030, 1031, sup.

and other brutal assassins.

taking of the communion from the same consecrated host, divided into two parts; after all this unprincipled hypocrisy, at the instigation of that wicked people aforesaid, he caused him to be arrested and hurried away from the table and entertainment, to be torn limb from limb between the tails of horses, and then having cut off the head, he gave orders to have the mutilated corpse hung to a gallows by the feet.

"Again, Geoffrey de Penthoiris, of the same nation, was guilty of similar treatment towards Maurice king of Leinster, and Arthur his father, persons of exalted rank and high influence. After having first made them an entertainment, he afterwards in the course of the same night murdered them in his own house as they lay asleep in their beds. And in like manner John Fitz Thomas, earl of Adar, having been guilty of the murder of an Irishman of noble rank, a near connection of his own, three days after the bloody act, caused the head to be cut off, with the mean object of selling it; not indeed perpetrating the act himself directly, but employing others as his agents for this business. And in the same way did the same earl John deal towards John son of that most worthy individual Calvagh aforesaid, a fine promising youth whom he had received from the baptis(See Holin- mal font, and who had ever since been constantly reared shed's Chr.) up with himself, but whom at length, after the detestable death of his relative above noticed, he first immured in a murky dungeon, and then a few days after, caused him therein to be assassinated, staining with guiltless blood his guilty soul.

The opinion that it was no sin to

kill an Irish

man, main

tained by

the monks,

"These few instances, notorious to the public, of the numberless outrages of that people, may suffice by way of example for the present occasion. And although conduct of the kind must appear to all Christians abominable and worthy of detestation, nevertheless by those of that nation above-mentioned, (as we are compelled to